Common Writing Mistakes

Whenever I receive e-mails from peers or proofread papers in classes, the most common mistakes involve spelling and usage of these words: they're, their, there, you're, your, it's, and its. Limited character usage within text messages and social applications like Twitter may be responsible for the increase in these errors, but a variety of other factors may be involved. However, some tips that I learned from my teachers while going through elementary, middle, and high school have continued to be helpful to me even as a college student.

• Remember that the apostrophe represents a contraction. For example, when deciding between using "you're" and "your," try to break the contraction into the two words that it represents. Are you trying to say "you are," or "your" for a possessive description?

• Their, your, and its are possessive adjectives, which simply means that they are used to describe an object that belongs to someone.For instance, an easy way to distinguish possessive adjectives from contractions would be to try them both out in the sentence in question. For example, "The dog finished it is (it's) food," or "The dog finished its food." You wouldn't want to have two verbs in the same sentence, so the possessive adjective (the one without the apostrophe) is correct in this case.

These tips are two of the most useful pieces of advice that I've learned to avoid common writing pitfalls, especially with the misuse of possessive adjectives and contractions. Once I made a habit of consciously thinking about word choice in my writing, I've never made these mistakes--even without spell check.