Checklist for Correctness

Print copy of your draft to use with this checklist.

AGREEMENT: Subjects and their verbs need to agree in number (she says, they say); Nouns and their pronouns need to agree in number and gender (he rides his horse; they ride their horses)

APOSTROPHES: Review these. Do not use apostrophes to show plural!

COMMAS: Review; almost no one uses them accurately, myself included.

CORRECT WORDS: watch out for the tricky words that a spell checker cannot help with, such as "affect" and "effect." (e.g. Salt affects slugs; the effect is to melt them.) The only way to be sure which word is which is to use a dictionary and check the meaning.

FRAGMENTS: If you are not sure what makes a complete sentence, review! Sentence fragments are not acceptable college level English.

HE/SHE: "Their" is plural, so if you are using he/she as an indefinite person, you are stuck with his/her umbrella. It's easier to use the plural, or find a specific guy or gal to write about.

LAYOUT: This should be neat, orderly and attractive throughout the paper.

ONE: A clumsy person word. "One should know better than to carry one's umbrella only when the sun shines." Try to find another way to write about indefinite people. Try "People should know better than to carry their umbrellas..." Or there's always, "We should know better than to carry our umbrellas..."

PREPOSITIONS: I'm seeing a lot of misused prepositions these days. Try to be careful to select the correct one for each phrase, and if you are not sure which one that is, get a Dictionary of American Usage and look it up.

PRONOUN REFERENCE: Be sure your reader knows who "she" is, and who "her" refers to, as in "Sally had a horse; Suzy rode her horse; she was teaching her how to jump." Is the horse Sally's or Suzy's? Is "she" Sally or Suzy? Is "her" Sally or Suzy or the horse?

RUN-ONS: If you are not sure how to combine two complete sentences into one without a comma splice, review!

-S & -D: If you (or your folks) come from certain parts of the USA, you may not pronounce some final consonants, such as "s" and "d." This creates problems that look like agreement problems, but are rooted in pronunciation and the odd nature of English. The following simple rules may help.

s shows singular for verbs (he goes), but plural for nouns (the ducks)

d shows past tense for many verbs: she talked; they walked

SPELLING: Use a spellchecker, and then double check to be sure that you don't have the wrong word, spelled correctly.