A friend recently sent me this link to a grammar website, Grammarly. Grammarly gives you tips, tricks, and some plugins to help keep your grammar in check. Honestly, I don’t know if it’s any better than the next, but I do know one thing. I know that the majority of engineers and construction professionals cannot put together a paragraph void of grammar mistakes. It’s excusable to communicate without finesse but untenable to consistently do it sloppily.
If you are unable or unwilling to improve your spelling and/or grammar, or to use a site like grammarly.com, at least take away these tidbits of grammar helpers:
- It’s versus its – the apostrophe is only used when you are forming a contraction. So, “it’s” to mean anything other than “it is” is incorrect. “It’s” is not to be used to show possession.
- Affects versus effects – affects is a verb and effects are things.
- Their/there/they’re – They’re headed to town to see their daughter who used live in that house over there; these are all correct uses of these words.
- Should of versus should have – “We should have poured that concrete yesterday” is correct. “We should of poured that concrete yesterday” is incorrect.
- Colon (:) versus semi-colon (;) – the colon is used to start a series while the semi-colon is used as a break between two sentences, but not a full stop.
- Further versus farther – Further is not a distance and cannot be measured while farther is related to a measurable distance.
- A lot versus allot versus alot – A lot is a large amount or number of people or things or can be used to modify a noun; it can also be used as an adverb meaning very much or very often. Allot is a verb which means to give for a particular purpose. Alot is not even a word.