Errors In Spoken English Language Analysis

The second half of this essay will examine common grammatical errors within the written and spoken English language. According to Jeff Anderson in Mechanically Inclined, common errors include subject-verb agreement, sentence fragments, dangling or misplaced modifiers, comma splices, tense shift, preposition misuse, and vague pronoun reference.

Karen Sneddon states the simple rules of verb agreement in her article Back to Basics. “A subject must agree with its verb. A singular noun requires a singular verb. The layer files the brief in the clerk’s office. A plural noun requires a plural verb. The lawyers arrive at the client’s office at 10 o’clock in the morning.” (Sneddon 86). This is a very basic rule of grammar, but this rule is many times

Fragments are not complete sentences because they do not contain an independent clause, thus meaning that they are unable to stand on their own. Fragments have no main clause, utterly making a sentence meaningless. In A&P, John Updike writes the sentence “I mean, it was more than pretty.”, and it could be considered a fragment. What is the main clause? There is not one presented in this sentence. When an audience reads a fragment, they are likely to become confused and have to backtrack in their reading a few sentences to find the subject and verb, or main clause. If we backtrack to the sentence in A&P prior to this one, Updike writes “with the straps pushed off, there was nothing between the top of the suit and the top of her head except just her, this clean bare plane of the top of her chest down from the shoulder bones like a dented sheet of metal tilted in the light.”. Based on this sentence, one would conclude that the main clause is “there was nothing between the top of the suit and the top of her head except just her”. Given that this is the case, it now makes sense why the narrator would make the statement “I mean, it was more than

“English researchers and editors often ask writers to revise sentences that contain dangling modifiers” (Rodby 219). A modifier is something that describes or gives more detail about a subject. “Correctly placed modifiers sharpen the images of sentences and combine multiple ideas or actions in one sentence” (Anderson, Mechanically Inclined). If the modifier becomes dangling, when not enough information has been given in a sentence and the sentence becomes unclear. “Researchers have referred to dangling modifiers as modifiers that modify nothing in a sentence” (Bonaventure, Dangling Modifiers: What is wrong with them?). The sentence “standing on one leg in the swamp, I saw a heron” (Rodby 219) is a given example of a dangling modifier. This sentence may lead one to believe that a someone is literally standing in a swamp balancing on one leg watching a heron, when really, this sentence means while looking in the swamp, someone saw a heron standing on one leg. To keep the modifier “standing on one leg in the swamp” one could instead say “I saw a heron standing on one leg in the swamp”. When the sentence is read this way, an audience is more likely to believe that the heron is standing on one leg in the swamp instead of someone