Download Quick Reference – Editing for Most Common Errors

Quick Reference Editing
Read from last sentence to first. Underline all verb phrases twice and their subjects once.
What is a verb?
One of the first things we learn about verbs is that they are one of the main parts of a
sentence. Being able to find verbs can help you develop your editing skills by identifying
some of the most common grammar errors: verb tense, verb agreement, verb form, and
sentence structure.
Verbs have very specific criteria; if you have all of the following on your checklist, you can
be confident you have a verb:
A verb demonstrates a physical or mental action. The verb tells what the subject
does. Often, verbs take an object to make the thought more complete.
College students study.
Professors give out a course syllabus in order to inform students of class expectations.
Academic advisors help students register for classes.
Not all verbs demonstrate an action. A verb can also demonstrate a state of being.
These verbs are also called ‘linking verbs’ because they link the subject to the noun or
adjective after the verb. Think of a linking verb as an = sign:
First-year college students are often overwhelmed by the demanding expectations of
college.
Michelle’s professor seems quite knowledgeable and caring.
Professor Peterson is a published author.
Some common linking (state of being) verbs in addition to ‘be’ (is, am, are, was, were) are:
appear
remain
become
seem
feel
smell
grow
sound
keep
stay
look
taste
prove
What is a verb phrase?
Sometimes, actions happen quickly or simply, so there is only one word in the verb phrase,
as in the examples above. However, sometimes, the activity or condition continues over a
long stretch of time, happens predictably, or occurs in relationship to other events. In these
instances, a single-word verb like study or are cannot accurately describe what happened, so
writers use verb phrases (or verbs that are made up of more than one word) to
communicate what they mean. As many as four words can comprise a verb phrase. A verb
phrase always contains a main verb, and sometimes it contains helping (auxiliary) verbs.
➤ Verb Auxiliaries: These are special because sometimes they are main verbs (stand alone
verbs), and sometimes they are helping verbs. It depends on how they are used in the
sentence.
be (is, am, are, was, were)
have (has, had)
do (does, did)
Here are some examples showing them as main verbs and as auxiliaries.
MAIN: A university is not simply a place to train students for specific jobs or careers.
AUX:
Things are moving very fast for Michelle, and she’s having a hard time keeping up.
MAIN: I have no idea what this means.
AUX:
She has found that things are not what she expected.
MAIN: You're old enough to take responsibility for what you do.
AUX:
Do not wait until the last couple of weeks to meet with your professors.
➤ Modal Auxiliaries The words below are ONLY helping verbs, so they must always be
followed by the main verb. Modal auxiliary verbs never change form. You cannot add an -ed,
-ing, or -s ending to these words. They have only one form.
can
might
shall
would
could
must
should
ought to
may
will
**The following are also used as modals in spoken or more casual English:
be able to
be going to
be supposed to
would rather
have to
had better
have got to
used to
be allowed to
be about to
need to
We must provide students with the skills necessary for gainful employment.
You need to study at least 2 to 3 hours outside of class for each hour in class.
MODAL + MAIN VERB
MODAL + BE + PRESENT PARTICIPLE
MODAL + HAVE + PAST PARTICIPLE
Modal auxiliaries indicate necessity or obligation:
College students should study each day in order to retain information.
College students ought to be attending class regularly.
College students have to be organized.
College students are supposed to come to class prepared.
Modal auxiliaries indicate possibility:
Students might try a tutor for more feedback on their writing.
My roommate could have gone to her T.A. for additional advice before the test.
Modal auxiliaries also show willingness or ability:
Marie will go to her professor’s office hours to ask questions.
John can attend the 12pm section to make up missing class on Tuesday.
Stephanie is able to make up the exam this Friday.
Verb forms
Verbs, whether they stand alone or function with auxiliaries and modals, come in specific
forms. Think about how the branches of the military each have their own uniform. The Air
Force, Army, Navy, Marines and Coast Guard have very different and distinct uniforms, yet
they all make up the military. When we speak of verb forms, we are referring to their
distinctive ‘looks’.
All verbs come in five forms (except for the verb be; it is the only English verb with more
than five forms). Verbs in English have one of the five following forms:
➤BASE FORM This is the plain verb in its original form, with no changes. It is the form that
follows the modal auxiliaries or with main verbs in the present tense with the subjects I, you,
we, and they.
walk,
stay,
study,
eat,
open,
write,
run,
think
➤PARTICIPLE FORMS: These forms use auxiliaries to describe very specific time frames
present participle form This is the [base form]+ [-ing] and is used with the helping verb ‘be’
(is/am/are/was/were).
is walking
are saying
was eating
am opening
were studying
**If the -ing form is functioning as a verb, it MUST have ‘be’ before it or it is not a verb; it may
be an adjective or a noun (gerund).
➤past participle form uses the helping verb ‘have’ with the past participle
a) REGULAR VERBS: The past participle of regular verbs is the [base form] + [-ed].
have walked
have opened
have studied
**Even though it looks like past tense form, it isn't because it has the helping verb ‘have’.
b) IRREGULAR VERBS: As we said before, there are fewer irregular verbs than regular
verbs in English. However, these verbs are some of the most commonly used verbs.
They do not use -ed. Many irregular verbs have a completely different form in the
past participle.
past tense form participle form
said
have said,
thought
have thought
ate
have eaten
ran
have run
wrote
have written.
➤TENSED FORMS: The following forms are used to show tense (time) without auxiliaries.
third-person singular form This is the [base form] + [-s] or (-es). It is used with he, she or it in
the present tense.
He/She/It
opens, says, writes, studies, runs, eats, thinks, walks
past tense form. This form depends on whether the verb is regular or irregular.
a) REGULAR VERBS: Most verbs are regular verbs. With these, past tense is the
[base form] + [-ed].
walked,
opened,
studied
b) IRREGULAR VERBS: There are fewer irregular verbs than regular verbs in English,
but these few verbs are some of the most commonly used English verbs. We call
these verbs irregular because they don't use -ed in the past tense form.
ate,
gave,
said,
thought,
wrote,
ran,
went,
came
A verb phrase MUST have a subject
It must have a subject; many times we use –ed words as adjectives for example, so this final
criteria is the key to certainty. Ask yourself: “Who or What (insert verb)? If there is an
answer to this question, you have a verb phrase with a subject. Remember to look ‘left’ for
the subject.
Example: For years my essay writing had been a major weakness for me academically.
“had been” is the past participle form, but to be sure it’s a verb, I ask “Who or what ‘had
been’?” The answer is ‘writing’, which is a gerund (noun) because there is no ‘be’ helping
verb, so ‘writing’ is the subject.
Reminders about subjects:
a. They are nouns or noun phrases (person, place, thing, idea or animal) or words acting as
nouns (pronouns, gerunds, to+ base form) and are found to the left of the verb in English
word order, so don’t look after the verb phrases for it.
b. They can be difficult to find because there can be many nouns in the subject. Watch for
nouns that are part of ‘prepositional phrases’. These nouns cannot multi-task. If they belong
to a prepositional phrase, they are off limits.
Example: [For years] my essay writing [in my English classes] had been a major weakness for
me.
‘For years’ and ‘in my English classes’ are prepositional phrases because they begin with a
preposition and end with a noun. Prepositions are little words that give more details about
location, direction, or time. The most common prepositions are: in, to, at, for, of, between,
on, under, over, above, through, but there are about 70 in the English Language.
What are the most common types of errors?
❖ Verb form : The verb doesn’t look like one of the five forms
I became very lost and confused because the only form of writing I had ever wrote was in the
five paragraph form.
“Had wrote” is wrong. It should be ‘had written’ because ‘wrote’ is past tense form. If ‘have’
is the helping verb, you must use the past participle form, in this case, “written”.
Advice: To avoid this, make sure you know the five verb forms, especially the differences
between past tense and past participle for irregular verbs.
❖ Verb agreement: The number in the subject does not agree with the number the verb
shows.
Writing [in five paragraphs] [throughout my high school years] have been a mistake.
The above sentence has incorrect verb agreement because the writer is using ‘have’ to
agree with ‘years’, but ‘years’ is not the subject; it is part of a prepositional phrase. If you
have a noun in a prepositional phrase, you cannot use it as the subject, so you have to go
further to the left to find a ‘free’ noun that fits. Notice ‘paragraphs is a noun, but it is also in
a prepositional phrase with ‘in’, so we keep going until we find ‘writing’. This is an –ing
acting as a noun and should agree with the verb. Since ‘writing’ is an ‘it’, the verb should be
‘has been’.
Advice: Make sure you have the verb agrees with the correct noun, the one that is the
subject and not part of a prepositional phrase.
❖ Verb tense: The writing jumps between past and present without any signals.
I sit in front of my laptop debating with my classmate for over an hour about how we planned
on writing our “new form” essays. It was weird that we had both admitted we had complained
about being subjected to always writing 5 paragraph essays in the past, but now that we had a
choice, we are complaining that we had no idea how to compose a paper.
‘sit’ and later ‘are complaining’ are in present tense, while the rest are in past. Since the
personal account happened in the past, all verbs referring to that point in time must stay in
the past. In English, we do not ‘come to present’ without a signal, like, “in my classes
currently” or “now”. The writer uses ‘now’ above, but incorrectly because he is still
discussing a past event.
Advice: Make sure you use past tense to describe past, true-life experiences. Use present
tense to discuss current information or habits, general truths or theories or current
conditions. Also use present tense when discussing ideas in an article or any works of
literature. Most importantly do not move from past to present or present to past without
signals: I am a good student in college now, but I was not so great in high school.
❖ Fragment: you have either a missing subject or verb, or a dependent clause acting as a
complete sentence.
A subject and a verb phrase create a clause. A clause may or may not be a sentence; it
depends on whether or not the clause is dependent or independent. A dependent clause is
not a complete idea and, therefore, may not be used alone as a sentence. It must be
attached to an independent clause to make sense.
Because the only form of writing I had ever written was in the 5-paragraph form.
In the above example, there is a subject and a verb, but the sentence is incomplete. The
word ‘because’ at the beginning of the clause makes it a dependent clause, which means it
must be attached to an independent clause for more information. So,..
I became very lost and confused because the only form of writing I had ever written was in the
5-paragraph form.
The above sentence is now correct because the first part is an independent clause.
Dependent clauses start with certain words, such as ‘because’, ‘while’ ,’after’, ‘if’, ‘before’,
‘when’, ‘how’, ‘where’, ‘since’, ‘who’, ‘that’, ‘whose’, ‘whom’, ‘which’, ‘although’, ‘even
though’, etc… When these are at the beginning of a clause, the clause is dependent and
must be attached to an independent clause in order to make sense. If the dependent clause
comes at the start, then there must be a comma after the dependent clause, but if it comes
after the independent clause, there is not comma. So, for the above example, there is no
comma before because but if the dependent clause came first, there would be a comma
after:
Because the only form of writing I had ever written was in the 5-paragraph form, I became very
lost and confused.
Another type of fragment is a missing subject or verb, which means there is no clause at all.
Always stressing about trying to formulate the perfect thesis statement, three reasons to
support my thesis, a conclusion sentence to sum up each body paragraph, and of course, a
decent conclusion.
In the above example there is no verb phrase or subject. This is only a piece of a complete
sentence.
Advice: Make sure all complete sentences have at least one subject and verb phrase and that
the subject and verb phrase are not preceded by a dependent clause word (subordinating
conjunction or relative pronoun).
❖ Run-on sentence: You have incorrectly joined together two or more independent
clauses.
Independent clause: a group of words with a subject and a verb that is a complete idea. And
independent clause is a complete sentence. When you combine independent clauses, you
must use the appropriate punctuation and/or conjunctions:




; nonetheless, therefore, however, . . . . etc
a period
a comma followed by F-A-N-B-O-Y (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so)
a semi-colon ;
;
Simply putting a comma between two independent clauses still creates a type of run-on
called a comma splice.
My five-paragraph essay was defunct, my own writing abilities were on the endangered species
list. I doubted if I even belonged in college, maybe I just wasn’t cut out for it.
In the above example, there are five clauses. One is a dependent clause that starts with ‘if’
and it is appropriately attached to the independent clause, “I doubted”. However, the other
four clauses are independent, so, even though they are short, they are complete sentences
and cannot be joined by commas. Here are some corrections:
My five-paragraph essay was defunct; my own writing abilities were on the endangered species
list. I doubted if I even belonged in college; maybe I just wasn’t cut out for it.
My five-paragraph essay was defunct, so my own writing abilities were on the endangered
species list. I doubted if I even belonged in college; as a result, maybe I just wasn’t cut out for it.
** Note: As long as you follow the rules, how you decide to correct errors is up to you.
❖ Word choice: The wrong word is being used or a homonym has been used.
Example: We had complained about being subjected to always writing 5 paragraph
essays in the passed, but . . .
In the above example, ‘passed’ sounds like ‘past’, so the two have been confused.
Example: Its true that students frequently have issues with there writing.
In the above example ‘its’ should be “it’s” to represent ‘it is’; and ‘there’ indicates direction,
not possession like ‘their’. Some other common mistakes: advise/advice, lost/loss,
except/accept, assent/ascent, brake/break, council/counsel, desert/dessert, elicit/illicit,
ensure/insure, stationary/stationery.
Advice: You must be sure of the words you use in your writing. When in doubt, check the
dictionary.
 Pronoun/Antecedent Agreement
A pronoun is a substitute for a noun. The pronouns or nouns that they refer to are called
antecedents. A pronoun and its antecedent are in agreement if they are both singular or
both plural.
Example:
Dr. Morganstern finished his rounds.
Frequent misuse of plural pronouns occurs with two types of singular antecedents:
indefinite pronouns and generic nouns.
1. Indefinite Pronouns refer to nonspecific persons or things.
They include: any, either, everything, no one, each, anybody, everybody, neither, someone,
anyone, everyone, none, something
Example:
In class everyone performs at his or her level of ability.
2. Generic Nouns
Generic nouns represent a typical member or any member of a group, such as a typical
student or any lawyer.
Example: Every student must pull all-nighters regularly if he or she wants to excel.
To correct a mistakenly plural pronoun referring to a singular general noun, you can do one
of the three things mentioned above.
Suggestions for Working with Generic Nouns:

Treat collective nouns as singular unless the meaning is clearly plural. Collective nouns
include such words as: jury, committee, crowd, family, audience, couple, troop, team,
class.

Ordinarily the group functions as a unit, so the noun should be considered singular;
however, if the members of the group function as individuals, the noun should be
treated as plural.
Example: The O.J. Simpson jury has reached its decision.
Compare: The Illini crowd clapped their hands.

Compound antecedents connected by "and" should be treated as plural.
Example:

Jack and Jill climbed up a hill and fetched their pail of water.
When compound antecedents are connected by "or" or "nor" (or by "either...or" or
"neither...nor"), make the pronoun agree with the nearer antecedent.
Examples:
Either Desi or Lucy should be fired from her job.
Neither the engineering student nor the biology majors could remember their
schedules.
Correcting Agreement Problems
To correct a mistakenly plural pronoun referring to a singular indefinite pronoun or generic
noun, you can do one of three things:
1.
Replace the plural pronoun with he or she or [his or her.]
Example:
2.
Make the antecedent plural.
Example:
3.
When someone has been drinking, he or she is probably acting dumb.
When frat boys have been drinking, they are probably acting dumb.
Rewrite the sentence so that no problem of agreement exists.
Example:
A frat boy who has been drinking is probably acting dumb.
Advice: make sure all pronoun references clearly refer to the correct antecedents.
 The Passive
Read the following paragraph which is the conclusion to the essay, "My Mom."
I was brought up by my mother to be understanding, patience and wisdom. The kind
of person I am today is a result of her example and teaching. Many people are raised by
their parents to be obedient and quiet. My mother was such a good role model because she
taught me to listen and think for myself. All the famous actors, writers and politicians in the
world are not equal to my mother. I was lucky. When I was born, I was given the greatest
treasure of all, a wonderful mother. Someday, I will be just like her.
1. The verb phrase in the first sentence (was brought up...) has a form of the verb be
followed by the past participle form of the main verb. Underline the three other
complete verbs that also use this form.
2. With passive verbs, the subject is not who or what performed the action of the verb, as
in active sentences. The performer of the action is not the focus. Look at the three
sentences you have underlined and find the performer of the action (The person
responsible for the action of the verb). Then find the subject of the sentence.
3. Look again at the passive verbs you have underlined. Which are present and which are
past?
Form of the Passive
1. A passive verb always includes a form of be plus the participle of the verb.
2. In general, only verbs which have a direct object (transitive verbs) occur in the passive.
active: The boy eats cake everyday.
passive: Cake is eaten by the boy everyday
3.
Verbs like: be, agree, die, seem, happen, appear do not have passive forms.
However,
Some verbs can be either transitive or intransitive with a slight change in meaning.
Intransitive (active):
My sister has changed a lot.
Transitive (passive):
My position has been changed.
(active):
My boss has changed my position.
Forming the Passive
Active
Passive
Active
Passive
Active
Passive
Past
She wrote an essay
yesterday.
An essay was written
yesterday.
May was writing a
letter.
A letter was being
written.
They had written a
letter.
A letter had been
written.
Present
She writes an essay
everyday.
An essay is written
every day
May is writing a
letter now.
A letter is being
written now.
They have written
a letter.
A letter has been
written.
Future
She will write an essay
next week.
An essay will be _
written next week.
(Not in common use.)
They will have written
a letter by tomorrow.
A letter will have
been written by tomorrow.
Note: The passive can be used with modal auxiliaries too.
Active: Minh might write a letter
Passive: A letter might be written.
USE OF THE PASSIVE:
1.
Use the passive only when the doer of the action is not known, not important or is
obvious. The focus is on the action or the receiver of the action, not the doer.
Passive: John was arrested for drugs
Active: The police arrested John for drugs
2.
The doer of the action is called the agent and is expressed in a prepositional
phrase with "by." Because the focus is often on the receiver of the action, the
agent is often not stated.
The ambulance was called to the scene of the accident.