Top 20 Grammar Errors in English

The New St. Martin's Handbook Online provides a series of pages of the 20 Most Common Errors in college writing, which contain explanations of each error and examples of the error in sentences along with their corrections. Each error also has a variety of exercises you can use for practice in improving your skills (you must register (free) on the site for access to exercises, but not to the information pages).

Don't worry if your familiarity with grammar vocabulary is a bit rusty; these pages explain in plain language each problem and illustrate each with clear examples. One benefit to the grammatical terms used in the list: they will help you look up these problems in your own handbook for reference offline.

Below is a list of the twenty errors on the site, so you can jump to the number you need, or print this list as a reminder of things to look for while you edit your writing.

1. Missing comma after an introductory element
2. Vague pronoun reference
3. Missing comma in a compound sentence
4. Wrong word
5. Missing comma(s) with a nonrestrictive element
6. Wrong or missing verb ending
7. Wrong or missing preposition
8. Comma splice
9. Missing or misplaced possessive apostrophe
10. Unnecessary shift in tense
11. Unnecessary shift in pronoun
12. Sentence fragment
13. Wrong tense or verb form
14. Lack of subject-verb agreement
15. Missing comma in a series
16. Lack of agreement between pronoun and antecedent
17. Unnecessary comma(s) with a restrictive element
18. Fused sentence (also known as a run-on sentence)
19. Misplaced or dangling modifier
20. Its/It's confusion