The 5 writing errors I edit most often

Recently, I was asked to edit a master’s thesis, something I’ve done a few times over the last couple of years. While reviewing my roughly 1,000 edits in the thesis, I noticed that the most frequent errors fell under 5 categories, and that these 5 categories of edits often appear in other client documents.

I thought I’d share them with you to encourage you to keep an eye out when editing your work.

1. Comma usage

Comma usage seems to be the thing I catch the most in documents I edit. It seems as if comma usage just isn’t widely understood.

In order to situate the concept of cultural hegemony it is also necessary to consider the social and economic system of capitalism and the related concepts of class and power relations.

In this example, a comma should follow “hegemony” because it’s the end of an introductory phrase.

Here’s an example with an unnecessary comma:

They did not grant access, nor reciprocate correspondence with the author.

The comma in this case is simply unnecessary.

There are basically 8 times when you should use a comma:

1. Separating successive list items
2. Separating multiple adjectives that modify the same noun
3. Before conjunctions linking independent clauses
4. After introductory words or phrases
5. Around nonrestrictive phrases
6. With dates and addresses
7. When directly addressing someone
8. At the salutation and close of a letter

Stick with these 8 times, and you should be okay.

2. Passive voice

The passive voice is when the action of a sentence is attached to an object instead of the subject.

Theoretical concepts will be employed as a means to bring greater clarity to questions being posed.

In this sentence, there’s no subject; it’s implied. As a result, the action is attached to an object: theoretical concepts. This could be rewritten as one of two ways:

• I will employ theoretical concepts as a means to bring greater clarity to questions being posed.
• This paper will employ theoretical concepts as a means to bring greater clarity to questions being posed.

One word of note: the passive voice isn’t wrong per se, but it can weaken writing.

3. Capitalization

I don’t know why people are so intent on capitalizing nouns that are common nouns. On the flip side, sometimes I come across uncapitalized proper nouns.

The records department houses materials, including city council meeting minutes, that provide a record of City government involvement and interaction.

In this example, “city” is not a proper noun, and should remain uncapitalized.

The general rule is to capitalize proper nouns (Lethbridge, Jim, Queen Elizabeth) and to not capitalize common nouns (city, man, queen). Never use capitalization for emphasis.

4. Extra (or missing) spacing

Most of the time this appears, it seems to be an artifact from cutting and pasting content, deleting unneeded content, or adding new content. Most often, it’s 2 (or more) spaces after a period or a space immediately following an opening parenthesis. Using your word processor’s find and replace feature is an easy way to fix this.

5. Redundant and unnecessary wording

People love being wordy. So much so, in fact, that I devoted a Twitter hashtag to wordiness I come across. Wordiness isn’t technically wrong, but it hinders the clarity of your message.

• The aura that exists around the team presently is largely the result of . . .

“Presently” is redundant because the sentence is in the present tense.

• Theoretical concepts will be employed as a means to bring greater clarity to questions being posed.

“As a means” is unnecessary; removing it doesn’t harm the message of the sentence.

• In addition, these concepts also provide the author with further direction.

No need to use “in addition” and “also” in the same sentence.

• I will attempt to provide a critical examination of their place in the community.

This can be shortened to “I will attempt to critically examine their place in the community.”

Keep a careful eye out for words that are unnecessary or redundant and for ways to say what you need to in as few words as possible.

Do these common writing errors sound familiar to you? Do you have others that frequently show up in your writing? Let me know in the comments below.