On grammar

For the assignment of finding a candid editing mistake, I must say I had a pretty difficult time. I believe it might be because I spend most of my time reading published works that are heavily scrutinized by well-equipped and highly-experienced editing teams or professionals. Nevertheless, I finally came across a single one. The mistake appeared on a reading test done through McGraw-Hill’s online textbook. It was a simple repetition of a word that appeared on an answer to a question. In other words, they typed a word twice and overlooked it. Although it was a simple mistake, it goes to show that even the best of the best on the most professional of platforms are capable of making mistakes. I believe a way to avoid this scenario is to read your work out loud to yourself. Switching the medium your work is being consumed through, from visual to auditory, will allow you to notice small details your brain will automatically correct when you are only processing your words visually.

For easy grammar learning, I found this meme I thought to be not only entertaining, but also a valuable pointer. It is a tweet on behalf of The YUNiversity saying: “Besides being a ‘hipster period,’ a semicolon can be a ‘mega-comma’: ‘I went to Chicago, IL; Boston, MA; and Provo, UT last week.’ #grammar.” It’s a simple way to remember the nuanced difference of when a comma might be  appropriate versus a semicolon. Below, I've attached the image I pulled from the internet that includes an additional example.