Miller Thurston Cheryl. How to Avoid English Teachers' Pet Peeves

Improve your writing by eliminating the common errors that English teachers see most often.Cottonwood Press, Inc, 2001, ISBN: 187767351X, 168 pages, PDF, 1,2 MB.HOW TO AVOID ENGLISH TEACHERS' PET PEEVES is a book that helps writers avoid the annoying little errors that English teachers encounter nearly every day as they read student papers. It addresses the mistakes that make English teachers wince or, on really bad days, want to give up teaching and embark on a career selling real estate or life insurance. It is not intended to address major problems, like disorganized writing or writing that doesn't make sense
English teachers are not unreasonably persnickety. They just love words and like to see them used correctly. In college, they major in English because they love reading and writing. Then they become teachers and see their beloved language mangled countless times a day, day after day. Seeing "a lot" misspelled once isn't so bad. Seeing it misspelled as "alot" 57 times in one week does tend to ruin a teacher's sense of perspective
The pet peeves included in HOW TO AVOID ENGLISH TEACHERS' PET PEEVES were chosen in a survey of 125 English teachers from across the United States. The author uses a sense of humor and short, sensible explanations to help anyone, grade 5 and older, learn to avoid common writing errors. She has 30 years of experience as a teacher (grades 7 through uni-versity), writer and editor.The book is part of the Cottonwood Press "Teaching the Boring Stuff" series.Aggravate Your English Teacher Contest
English Teachers’ Pet Peeves
Using spell check without rereading a paper
Beginning with Hi. My name is...or Now I’m going to tell you
about...or This paper will be about...
Mixing up it’s and its
Confusing you’re and your
Using to and too incorrectly
Writing could of, should of, would of, or shoulda, coulda,
woulda, instead of could have, should have, or would have
Writing a lot as one word
Mixing up they’re, there, and their
Mixing up verb tenses
Using casual spellings and symbols in formal writing
Writing I seen
Writing kinda, sorta, and hafta instead of kind of, sort of, and have to
Starting sentence after sentence with well
Beginning sentence after sentence with so or then
Saying me and my friends
Using go instead of say or said
Using and stuff instead of specific examples
Using use to for used to and suppose to for supposed to
Saying and writing supposebly
Using the word like as a meaningless filler
Overusing exclamation points
Using irregardless and ain’t
Using a and an incorrectly
Misspelling etc
Writing The End at the end of a paper
Dividing a word at the end of a line for convenience rather than dividing
it at the syllable
Writing (or saying) exspecially and excape
Putting a comma at the beginning of a line instead of after the word on
the previous line
Using a comma before because
Writing and then I woke up at the end of a story
Using double subjects like My sister, she said...or Jason, he said...
Mixing up lose and loose
Using a colon with a list when it isn’t needed
Mixing up whose and who’s
Writing I’am
Separating two sentences with a comma
Mixing up lead and led
Dropping a quote bomb in the middle of a paragraph
Using a period too soon and turning a perfectly good sentence into a
sentence fragment
Assuming that slang is acceptable for any kind of writing
Using the wrong pronoun, as in Her and me are going to the mall or
Mary gave it to she and I
Writing an entire paper as one paragraph
Writing alright instead of all right
Starting sentences with But or And
Writing gotta, gonna, or wanna instead of got to or going to or want to
Using double negatives like I ain’t got none
Using good as an adverb
Writing all of the sudden instead of all of a sudden
Writing these ones instead of these
Mixing up quiet and quite
Review Exercises
Answer Keys