Editing Common Writing Errors

Finding mistakes in your own writing can be an exercise in frustration. Even editors and publishers admit a piece of writing can pass through edits by several different people, "And," as UT Books editor Arthur Salm said, "still errors appear in print." You've probably seen most of the editing methods suggested for finding errors in your copy or manuscript. You may use a word processing program with a built-in spelling and grammar checker, even having numerous options you can adjust. Any combination of methods physical and electronic will catch typographical errors and limited punctuation problems as well as some grammar and syntactical issues.

Other sources of mistakes, however, often defy the eyes and brains of both writers and editors. The website Common Errors in English is an exhaustive/exhausting list of transpositions, sound alike, tense, and more difficulties compiled by Paul Brians' brain. Get it--brian/brain? Altogether (or is it all together? I'm so confused!) in one compilation with links to explanatory pages, Brians offers help for the mystified purveyors of English language. His service could probably help ESLs, too. That's people who are learning English as a second language.