Common English Faux Pas and How To Avoid Them

Did Schooling Leave You Ill Prepared?

(Benjamin Cohen, Printerval, CC BY-NC 4.0 DEED)

You have an interview. You are traveling abroad and wish not to be the “stupid American.” You are trying to go to college, or back to college, and must write application essays.

Sometimes grammar really matters.

Here are, perhaps, the most common English errors, both in speech and writing, as compiled by MartyG Reports, as well as effective ways to remember and avoid them. (Edit after publication: This is the first part of what is now a continued series on grammar and style. A full syllabus is available at this link here.)

Special attention has been paid to mistakes that Microsoft Word can not or would not always detect.

“How are you?”

This starts nearly every in-person interaction. The question calls for an adverbial answer, not an adjective. Avoid answering “Good.” The ideal answers are “I am well” or “Not so well.”

Some modern dictionaries say that good may be used as an adverb to indicate that your condition is, on the whole, positive. But such avant-garde lexicography remains unconvincing to most serious grammarians. To them, 1) “Good” still sounds like nails on chalkboard in this context, and 2) answering “I am well” will set you apart from the rest of the field from the onset.

Alternatively, you may properly answer “I am fine.”

This writer has personally received positive feedback after a job interview for answering “Well” instead of “Good.”

Why?

When asked “How are you?” or “How are you doing?” your answer should either be a complete sentence, e.g., “I am well,” or, if an incomplete sentence, one that properly fills in the blank in “I am _____.”

And the clearest meaning of “I am good” is as to good versus evil. Literally speaking, to be good or do good is not about your wellbeing, but being a good person or doing good works.

One does good by feeding the hungry. One is good if one is honest, trustworthy and fair.

In contrast, when one is well, one is healthy and happy.

How best to remember it

Be on guard right at the start of the interview or other live meeting, when this issue typically presents itself.

“Me, too” versus “I, too”

When someone says “I am happy to be here,” it is best not to respond “Me, too.”

But “I, too,” is not always correct either. On the way out the door, for example, you would not commiserate with a colleague who tells you, “They laid me off,” by saying “I, too.” (That would mean, that you, too, had laid off your colleague.)

Why?

Me is an object pronoun. It comes on the receiving end of an action or preposition. I is a nominative pronoun. It performs an action or exists in a given state.

Use I when you mean, “I, too, am happy to be here.” Use me when you mean, “It happened to me, too.”

You would not say, for example: “Me, too, am happy to be here,” or “It happened to I, too.” Follow Lieutenant Commander Data’s perfect grammatical lead and use the appropriate pronoun in the appropriate place.

How best to remember it

We can not all be 24th-century androids with perfect grammar. But we can discern between doing or being something and having something done to us. The former calls for I, the latter for me.

Who versus whom

A good word processor will usually catch this one for you. But, unlike, e.g., its and it’s, who and whom do not sound the same (they are not homophones), and your word processor can not autocorrect your spoken words.

Why?

Like the preceding example, who is a nominative pronoun that performs an action or exists in a state, and whom is an object pronoun that receives an action.

Hemmingway’s famous title is not “For Who the Bell Tolls.” And even the freshest child does not ask, “Whom says so?”

How best to remember it

Remember it is For Whom The Bell Tolls and “Who says?”

May versus can

May and can are modal verbs. But, formally, they are not interchangeable.

May implies possibility or permission: Results may vary. Those with drivers licenses may operate motor vehicles on public roads.

Can speaks to capability, but not necessarily to legitimacy or permission: A driver can speed, despite the speed limit that says he may not speed.

Ask, “May I use the bathroom?” not, “Can I use the bathroom?” Also ask, “May I have some water?” not, “Can I have some water?”

Singular-plural agreement

Do not switch between singular and plural forms when they conflict. Federal judges mess this up regularly. Consider the following from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit:

“Every court considering attempts to manipulate the random assignment of judges has considered it to constitute a disruption of the orderly administration of justice.”

The two plurals (attempts and judges) disagree with some of the singulars (assignment, it and disruption). Now consider the following, where plurals are consistent.

Every court considering attempts to manipulate the random assignments of judges has considered them to constitute disruptions of the orderly administration of justice.

One versus 1

Use words for the whole numbers zero–nine, and, unless they start a sentence, use numerals for 10 and above. Also use numerals for fractional numbers, e.g., 3.14.

The following examples are incorrect:

1. Only 2 employees accepted the company’s offer.

2. Her blog post garnered twelve comments.

3. 15 residents raised their hands at town meeting.

Instead write them as follows:

1. Only two employees accepted the company’s offer.

2. Her blog post garnered 12 comments.

3. Fifteen residents raised their hands at town meeting.

But note one big exception to this rule directly below.

Spell out quotations, especially dialogue

Every so often one reads quotations like the following:

“The bullet was a .22,” said the forensics expert.

Or:

“Set course 315.75 degrees,” ordered the captain.

What is wrong with these examples? Microsoft Word likely will not flag them.

In the first example, did the forensics expert say “twenty-two caliber”? Or “point two-two”? How about “point twenty-two”? The reader does not know, and the writer has not really specified the exact words that were said. Now consider the following two examples:

“The bullet was a twenty-two caliber,” said the forensics expert.

“Set course three, one, five point seven five degrees,” ordered the captain.

The reader knows exactly which syllables were spoken and their rhythm. Thus the dialogue feels authentic.

Secondly, thirdly, etc.

According to The Elements of Style, one should not use secondly unless one is prepared to use firstly and defend it. The truth of this statement used to be self-evident. Folks nowadays use firstly without a blush.

Just use first or second.

Why

To serious grammarians, firstly, secondly, etc. are superfluous. First, second, etc. function just fine in their stead.

How best to remember it

Just remember that the ordinals fit just fine as adverbs without adding -ly.

Avoid contractions in formal writing, except…

Contractions are inherently informal. Thus they are discouraged in formal writing, except in quotations like dialogue. Consider the following section of Churchill’s famous speech:

“we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender…”

Now read it with contractions:

we’ll fight on the beaches, we’ll fight on the landing grounds, we’ll fight in the fields and in the streets, we’ll fight in the hills; we’ll never surrender…

The contractions lessen the impact and add an informality ill-suited to the subject matter.

The big exception to this rule is quotations, especially dialogue. Avoiding contractions there makes characters robotic and unreal. Consider one of The Godfather’s famous lines:

“I’m gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse.”

Removing the contractions would be untrue to the character.

Hyphen versus en dash (versus em dash)

Lawyers frequently make this mistake in legal citations. So law-school applicants should pay special attention.

Written English has three distinct characters: the hyphen (-), the en dash (–) and the em dash (—). Each has its uses. U.S. keyboards, however, have keys only for the hyphen. The en dash and em dash may be copied-and-pasted or, depending on the word processor, inserted in other ways.

Perhaps the most common and uncorrected error with these characters today is placing a hyphen in a range of numbers. For example, use an en dash, not a hyphen, to write, “The poem is on pages 15–16.”

But…

There is much to be said that these faux pas have become so common that you are justified in committing any of them. Your meaning will still be understood, after all.

But, practically speaking, your college application’s reviewer is unlikely to be persuaded by this argument. Neither is a well-educated job interviewer or classically educated Londoner.

Any others?

If you have experience as a job interviewer, essay grader, tour guide or similar professional, and you feel something is missing from this list, please specify it in a comment below. MartyG Reports may add it to this article and, of course, attribute you for your suggestion—the more common the error and more often it gets by word processors’ error checkers, the better.