Six errors account for most of what we mark in academic drafts
Not the exotic ones. These are the errors that survive a spellchecker, sound fine when read quickly, and get flagged by graders because they make a sentence say something other than what was meant.
Subject-verb agreement, when the subject is far from the verb
Agreement is easy in short sentences and gets lost when a long phrase separates the subject from its verb.
Wrong
The number of participants who completed all three stages of the intervention were higher than expected.
Right
The number of participants who completed all three stages of the intervention was higher than expected.
The subject is “the number”, which is singular. “Participants” is inside a modifying phrase and is not what the verb agrees with. The technique is to strike out everything between the subject and the verb and read what is left: the number was.
Watch “a number of”, which is plural, against “the number of”, which is singular.
Dangling modifiers
An opening participial phrase attaches to whatever noun comes next. If that noun is not the thing doing the action, the sentence says something absurd.
Wrong
After analyzing the transcripts, three themes became apparent.
Right
After analyzing the transcripts, we identified three themes.
The themes did not analyze anything. This error is especially frequent in methods sections, because writers avoid naming themselves and the actor disappears from the sentence.
Pronoun reference that could mean two things
A pronoun should have exactly one possible antecedent.
Ambiguous
The intervention was delivered alongside the existing program, and it improved attendance.
Clear
The intervention was delivered alongside the existing program, and the intervention improved attendance.
“This” at the start of a sentence is the most frequent offender, because it often refers to the whole previous sentence rather than to any one noun. The fix is to follow it with a noun: “this pattern”, “this finding”, “this limitation”.
Parallelism in lists and comparisons
Items in a series should share a grammatical form.
Not parallel
The course covers assessment design, how to write rubrics, and the analysis of student data.
Parallel
The course covers assessment design, rubric writing, and student data analysis.
The same applies to comparisons. If you write “more than”, make sure both sides of the comparison are the same kind of thing.
Tense consistency across a long document
Long documents drift because they are written over months. A broad convention holds in most disciplines:
| Section | Usual tense |
|---|---|
| Literature review | Past or present perfect: Okafor found, studies have shown |
| Methods | Past: participants were recruited |
| Results | Past for what you found: scores increased |
| Referring to your own tables | Present: Table 1 shows |
| Discussion | Present for implications: these findings suggest |
The most common drift is a literature review that starts in past tense and slides into present halfway through. It is worth one dedicated pass with only this in mind.
Affect, effect, and the rest of the pairs
| Word | Use |
|---|---|
| affect | Usually the verb: the change affected outcomes |
| effect | Usually the noun: a measurable effect |
| its / it’s | Possessive / it is |
| their / there / they’re | Possessive / place / they are |
| complement / compliment | Completes / praises |
| principal / principle | Main, or a person / a rule |
| cite / site | Reference / place |
| than / then | Comparison / time |
Spellcheckers pass every one of these, because both spellings are real words. They need a dedicated search near the end of the writing process.
A final-pass sequence that works
Run four separate passes rather than one. Each pass looks for one thing, because looking for everything at once means finding very little.
First, agreement: find every sentence longer than about 25 words and check the subject against the verb. Second, opening phrases: check that every sentence starting with an -ing or -ed phrase names the right actor immediately after. Third, “this” and “it”: confirm each one has a single clear referent. Fourth, the word pairs above, using search rather than reading.
Frequently Asked Questions
Traditionally plural, with datum as the singular, so the data were collected. In practice many disciplines now accept the singular, and APA prefers the plural. Check your field's convention and, more importantly, be consistent within the document. Switching between the two in one paper is what gets graded.
An opening phrase that describes something the sentence never names. After analyzing the data, the results were surprising implies the results did the analyzing. Fix it by naming the actor at the start of the main clause, as in after analyzing the data, we found the results surprising.
Broadly: past tense for what you did and what previous studies found, present tense for established knowledge and for what your tables show, and present or future for what your findings imply. The literature review is usually past or present perfect, and results are past.
In most disciplines now, yes, and APA explicitly prefers first person to awkward constructions like the researcher. Some fields and some instructors still prohibit it, so check. Avoid the passive voice used purely to dodge the question, because it usually makes the sentence harder to read.
Affect is usually the verb, meaning to influence. Effect is usually the noun, meaning the result. The intervention affected the outcome, producing a measurable effect. Effect can be a verb meaning to bring about, as in to effect change, which is rare and often mistaken for the other one.
In American usage, that introduces essential information and takes no commas, while which introduces nonessential information and takes commas. The instruments that failed calibration were replaced identifies which instruments. The instruments, which failed calibration, were replaced says all of them failed.
Partly. It reliably catches agreement and some punctuation. It is much weaker on dangling modifiers, ambiguous pronoun reference and tense consistency across a long document, because all three need an understanding of what you meant rather than of what you typed.
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