outWORD by Matte Downey

I was grading papers this past weekend. Many of them were really good, which made it all the more enjoyable for me. As always, I came across quite a few writing errors; this is understandable in students whose first language is not English, but even verbose writers with large vocabularies can make some pretty big mistakes. Here are a few of my favourites (mistakes, not verbose writers). May they bring a smile to your face as they sometimes do to mine. And yes, I have made pretty much all of these myself at one time or another. That's why I do something called 'proofreading.' 1. The split personality subject: This is when the beginning participle, which is supposed to describe something about the subject, does not match the subject found in the main clause of the sentence. Here are some examples that I wrote: a. Thinking that the chocolate cake in the fridge was the perfect way to end a long evening of studying, the kitchen became my destination. (My kitchen does a lot of t...