Common grammatical errors

Some extra stuff here we can work on.
Remember people, the idea is not just to be able to complete NL and have a decent vocabulary. We need to polish our VA skills to perfection. Let the blog be used for this purpose. It doesn't take much time anway.

1. Due to or Because of? Due to modifies nouns and is generally used after some form of the verb to be (is, are, was, were, etc.). Jan's success is due to talent and spunk (due to modifies success). Because of should modify verbs. Ted resigned because of poor health (because of modifies resigned).

2. Split infinitive, e.g. "I urge you to not support this Bill".

3. Misplaced modifier, e.g. "We need to stop dumping waste into the environment which kills the fish". To avoid this mistake, put the modifier as close as possible to the noun it is modifying. Repaired: "We need to stop dumping waste, which kills the fish, into the environment".

4. Dangling (or misplaced) participle A participial phrase at the beginning of a sentence must refer to the grammatical SUBJECT of the sentence. Wrong: "As the largest reptiles ever to have lived, small mammals could not compete with the dinosaurs". This suggests that small mammals were the largest reptiles ever to have lived. Repaired: "Being small and defenseless, small mammals could not compete with the dinosaurs". More examples).

5. Exhilirate or exhilarate?

6. Now this is weird… I always commit this mistake… I spell it as wierd

Here is a list of common misspellings-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_common_misspellings

Let's update this post as and when we come across something of use.

Lage raho!
MV