Top Grammar Reminders - Spring 2010

1. Know the difference between their, they’re, and there  
2. Eliminate your contractions (including they’re) – there are NO contractions in scholarly writing. 
3. Check your comma usage around quotation marks.    
4. Do not use single quotation marks as you would with your fingers in general speech.  Technically, the single quotation mark does not exist in scholarly writing.  
5. Possessive apostrophe usage: Ben’s sitar, Akbar’s tomb, Chelsea’s elephant.  The most common mistake this semester has been writing, “It’s,” when you mean, “Its.”
6. Proper colon and semicolon usage. 
7. Proper usage of italics - words in another language. 
8. SPELLING – especially names and places.