The Penguin Writers' Guides series provide authoritative, succinct and easy-to-follow guidance on specific aspects of written English. Whether you need to brush up your skills or get to gris with something for the first time, these invaluable Guides will help you find the best way to get your message across clearly and effectively. Common Errors in English is a thorough A-Z checklist of the mistakes that often crop up in all aspects of written English. It gives ready and authoritative guidance on today's usage difficulties, being up-to-date with all the latest controversies, pitfalls and oddities of our language. Written in a lively style, with plenty of interest and humour, Common Errors shouldn't be far from the fingertips of anyone who does any kind of writing.

Designed to help resolve most common English language problems and queries, this book has an accessible reference format with examples and explanations of mistakes regarding sentence construction, spelling, punctuation and grammar.

Most often we are judged by our language and misjudged because of the common errors in our language. A person interacting with you for the first time does mind your language and your language does make a favourable or unfavourable impression on the person and it does account for your success or failure in any attempt you make to achieve something. In fact, no great people of the world would have been great if they had not had the language they had. Unlike other books on common errors, the errors in this book have not been categorized into different chapters based on grammar.

Writing Wrongs is a concise and thoughtful guide to common errors in English. It covers frequently confused and misused words along with problems of grammar, punctuation, and style, and offers a brief and up-to-date guide to major citation styles. Though it provides guidelines and recommendations for usage, Writing Wrongs acknowledges the evolution of language over time and the fact that different contexts have different rules—it is not narrowly prescriptive. A friendly, flexible, and easy-to-read reference, Writing Wrongs will be useful to students and general readers alike.

The ESL edition of Common Errors in English offers a comprehensive survey of the sorts of difficulties second language learners most often experience with English—and provides real help to students in overcoming them. The body of the book is organized according to grammatical categories, covering such topics as Verb Tense difficulties; Word Order Problems; Negation; Gerunds and Direct Objects; Singular and Plural Difficulties; and Direct and Indirect Speech. Included as well is a comprehensive section on usage and meaning, and a list of words commonly misspelled. The authors take care to avoid the harshly prescriptive; the book is informed throughout by a sympathetic understanding both of the difficulties that face every ESL student and of the particular problems faced by individuals from different linguistic backgrounds as they learn the peculiarities of English grammar and usage. The book includes a generous selection of exercises informed by these principles, and an accompanying answer key. Common Errors in English: ESL Edition will be an invaluable reference text for second language learners at a wide variety of levels.

Ever stumble when choosing between who and whom, affect and effect, lay and lie? Are you worried that how you speak or write is holding you back at work? Do you fear you're making frequent conversational errors, but just aren't sure what's correct? How you use language tells people a good deal about who you are, how you think, and how you communicate. Making simple errors in written and spoken English can make you seem less sophisticated even less intelligent than you really are. And that can affect [not effect) your relationships, your friendships, and even your career. This comprehensive, easy-to-use reference is a program designed to help you identify and correct the most common errors in written and spoken English. After a short and simple review of some basic principles, When Bad Grammar Happens to Good People is organized in the most useful way possible by error type, such as Problem Pronouns or Mixing up Words That Sound the Same. You choose how to work your way through, either sequentially or in the order most relevant to you. Each chapter contains tests to help reinforce what you've learned. Best of all, the information is presented in a clear, lively, and conversational style this is not your 8th grade grammar textbook!

This book analyzes the errors most commonly made in spoken and written English and presents them in a systematic, down-to-earth manner. It does not dictate grammar to the reader; rather, it presents the guidelines for English usage currently being observed by the most competent and careful speakers and writers. The most troublesome words and phrases—as well as grammatical terms—are listed alphabetically within 18 subject areas to enable the reader to check quickly on questions of usage. In each case, illustrative examples are given, and the guiding principle is stated for the reader to follow in avoiding the mistake and others similar to it. An extensive index for additional ease of reference helps make this book a handy tool for the modern reader who realizes that mere knowledge is no longer sufficient—that one must be able to express his knowledge clearly, forcefully, and correctly.