General Writing-Related Errors

Abrupt transitions	Spelling
Agreement of pronouns and antecedents	Splitting infinitives (e.g., to laboriously run)
Contradictions	Subject-verb agreement
Failure to provide adequate support for a position or decision	Transitions between paragraphs
Faulty parallelism	Transitions within paragraphs
Lack of citation	Telegraphic sentences
Logic/conceptual/theoretical errors	Tense shifting
Misplaced or dangling modifiers	Unclear pronoun reference (e.g., beginning a sentence with “It,” or “This”)
Misuse of apostrophes	Underdeveloped paragraphs
Misspellings (spelling errors indicate the writer’s shoddy attitude toward the whole paper)	Use of contractions or hyphenation
Misuse of words (e.g., it’s-its, from-form, thus-therefore, affect-effect, that-which, i.e.-e.g.)	Use of informal words (e.g., get, you know, etc.)
Omitted commas (e.g., you must signal nonrestrictive or nonessential material)	Use of sexist or biased language
Over paragraphing	Vague, unclear, or awkward wording
Run-on paragraphs	Wordiness
Run-on sentences	Wrong Tense
Sentence Fragments	Capitalization Errors (e.g., "white" when referring to race)

1.    Do not get side-tracked. If onions are the most consumed vegetable in the world, why are fire engines red? 

2.    Avoid starting sentences with a non-specific pronoun. It is not a good way to begin. 

3.    Prepositions are words you should not end sentences with. (click here for a list of common prepositions)

4.    Avoid clichés like the plague. Now ain't that the pot calling the kettle black. 

5.    Keep away from ampersands & abbreviations, etc. within the body of the text. 

6.    Parenthetical remarks are unnecessary (and should be avoided). 

7.    It is wrong to ever split an infinitive. 

8.    Contractions shouldn't appear in your paper. 

9.    Foreign words and phrases are not apropos or chic. 

10.  Like most people, one should never generalize. 

11.  Eliminate quotations. As Mark Twain once said: ''Quoting the witticisms of others only shows the lack of quotable wit.” 

12.  Comparisons are as bad as clichés. 

13.  Do not be redundant; do not use more words than necessary; it is very excessive. 

14.  Profanity sucks. 

15.  Be more or less specific. 

16.  Understatement is always best. 

17.  Exaggeration is a million times worse than understatement. 

18.  Can I use one-word sentences? No. 

19.  Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake. 

20.  The passive voice is to be avoided. 

21.  Go around the barn at high noon to avoid jargon or gibberish. 

22  Who needs rhetorical questions? 

23  Be careful to use apostrophe's correctly. 

24.  Do not use them pronouns as modifiers. 

25.  And never start a sentence with a conjunction. And, but, and or will not get you very far. 
 

1.  The participants were 8 predominantly women undergraduate students at Valdosta State University.

2.  This inferiority is due to the societal expectations and the negative stereotypes used towards the elderly.

3.  All of these past findings helps relate to the purpose of this study being conducted.

4.  Their experiment is a good example of the cultural has about the elderly.

5.  When we do see the elderly being active citizen, we categorizing them as falling outside the norming.

6.  One description was a description of a 75 year old man and the other description was of elderly women.

7.  This insignificance may be due to the fact that the ideologies pertaining to older persons is changing.

8.  Clothes are getting more outrageous and health clubs are popping up on every corner.

9.  So was true in this study.

10. It is also common knowledge among those of us within the field of psychology that the use of
     deceit in psychological research is widespread.

11. Researchers Timothy C. Brock and Lee Alan Becker of Ohio State University were the first to
      address this issue in 1966 in their article titled Debriefing and Susceptibility to Subsequent Experimental
      Manipulations.  (Note: One of the reasons that articles have reference sections is so that such information is not
      conveyed within the text.)

12.  It did have an effect if the experimenters were similar in nature.

13. This idea that performance-contingent rewards are being more effective than suggests that
      basing pay on performance will produce more motivation to perform.

14. Approximately 85 per cent...

15. Theses researchers...

16. Also, the study including finding out if males were more attracted to tall attractive females or short attractive females.

17. A growing idea of research is on physical attractiveness and unattractiveness and the effects it has on jobs and living.

18. This could possibly indicate that society generally views attractive individuals as credible people, and unattractive individuals as incredible people.

19. Psychology often deals with the psychology of why people are the way they are due to the psychology of nature and nurture.

Most word processing programs come standard with a spell checker, which is a wonderful tool for writing. However, a downside of the spell checker is it encourages laziness in the writer. For example, you finish typing a term paper and run spell check to look for mistakes. When there are no spelling errors, you figure that the paper is fine and you turn it in without proof-reading it. Proof reading is just as important as checking the spelling but takes much longer which is why most students do not proof-read their papers. Can you decipher the poem below? 
 

Writer’s Handbook – 12 Common Errors
           http://www.wisc.edu/writing/Handbook/CommonErrors.html#frag

SoYouWanna Avoid Common Writing Errors
           http://www.soyouwanna.com/site/syws/wrerrors/wrerrors.html

Serendipity – Common Errors
           http://serendipity.magnet.ch/errors.html

Common Errors in English
           http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~brians/errors/errors.html

The Elements of Style: William Strunk, Jr.
           http://www.bartleby.com/141/index.html