Instructors: Students are often clueless about what to wear to the office. And in all fairness, sometimes it can be a difficult call. Before you discuss office wear in your classroom, put students into groups and have them discuss this fun quiz. It’s a great way to start a lively conversation. Download PDFs for the exercise and key at the end of the post.
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Writers often include unnecessary commas, which can slow down readers’ understanding and increase the time it takes to comprehend the meaning of a sentence. Writers typically insert a comma when none is needed when they do the following:
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[Instructors: Download PDFs of the exercise at the bottom of the post.]
Writing sentences at work frequently includes long phrases, technical terms, and multiple actors, which can lead to a common grammatical no-no: subject-verb agreement errors. This mistake occurs when the verb does not agree with the subject of its clause, primarily because a sentence’s structure makes the subject hard to identify. Below are three causes of subject-verb agreement errors.
1. Intervening phrases
When a prepositional phrase separates the subject from the verb, writers may mistakenly match the verb to the noun closest to it rather than the true subject.
Incorrect The report from the regional offices need revision.
Correct The report from the regional offices needs revision.
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