Whether you are a student, blogger, or a journalist, spelling and grammar are not mistakes you’d want to make in your writing. These two are important elements of good writing. Writing with correct grammar and spelling makes your writing more readable and enjoyable to the reader.
Aside from that, if you’re a student and you write something with wrong spelling or grammatical errors, you might lose points. If you’re a professional, especially in the publication industry, you might lose some credibility if your piece has some errors.
While we deal with these two in our daily life, there are some things that aren’t clear. So, saying all of that, let’s explore spelling and grammar.
Grammar
Grammar explains the structure of words and how they are placed in sentences. It also provides information that allows someone convey a message to a reader. Aside from that, it shows your ability to deliver clear communication to your readers. Grammar provides us rules to follow in both written and verbal communication in order to understand each other. Now, let’s see the different elements of grammar:
Parts Of Speech
- Nouns. These name persons, objects, animals, or abstract ideas. Example: John, computer, cat, faith
- Verbs. Words that express states of being, actions, or events. Example: is, run, build
- Pronouns. They replace nouns or other pronouns in a sentence to avoid redundancy. Example: I, we, it
- Adjectives. Adjectives describe, quantify, or identify nouns. They usually precede the nouns they describe. Example: beautiful, large, slow
- Adverbs. Adverbs modify verbs, adjectives, another adverb, or a clause and indicate time, manner, place, degree, or cause. They usually answer the questions when, where, how, and how much. They usually end with the -ly suffix. Example: later, strangely, rapidly
- Preposition. They link pronouns, nouns, and phrases to other words in a sentence and show a relationship of time, place, or logic. Example: in, at, on
- Conjunction. Conjunctions link words, phrases, or clauses. Example: and, if, therefore
- Interjections. These are words that show emotion and is usually followed by an exclamation point. Example: Yay!, Aha!, Bravo!
All of these parts of speech are used in a sentence.
Sentence
Complete sentences have two parts: subject and predicate. Subject is who or what the sentence is about. These are nouns and pronouns. Predicate is what the subject is doing. These are verbs. The other parts of speech add more information to the subject and predicate.
Example: John builds a house.
In the example, the subject is John and the predicate is builds.
Spelling
Spelling helps cement the connection that is shared between sounds and letters. With the help of spell-checkers in word processors, you can’t have that much spelling mistakes. However, watch out for homonyms. These are pairs of words that sound alike but differ in spelling and meaning. For example, the words then and than, dual and duel, and affect and effect. If you don’t know the difference and right usage of these words, it’s likely that you’ll use them wrong. You don’t want that, write – I mean – right?
How Can You Make Sure?
Nobody’s perfect – one can make mistakes, even if they’re doing something for a long time. The same goes with writing. So the best thing to do to make sure that your writing is error-free is to proofread it. Luckily, there are many proofreading tools at your disposal!