Grammar Mistakes
(General)

Some grammar errors you may not realize are errors:

  • Home versus hone You do not hone in on some objective. You home in. You hone knives and skills.
  • Lay versus lie Lay is a transitive verb. That means that it requires an object. You lay a bowl on the table. You lay a baseball on the mound. Lie is intransitive; no object. If you take a nap, you lie down. You don't lay down. See the difference?
  • Alot Alot is not a word. If you're trying to say there is a bunch of something, you say there is a lot. There's no such word as alot. But I can't tell you how many college educated people I've seen employ this usage.
  • That big of a deal People say that something is not that big of a deal. Proper usage is, it's not that big a deal. Notice the omission of the word "of". Think about it.
  • Further and farther Further is used when there is no real measurement to the "distance". For example, "Jim took the proposal further than we intended". By contrast, farther indicates some measurement is possible. For example, "Sam went farther down the road than anyone had ever been". Sam's road is a measurable place, along with his movement.
  • Less versus fewer As with further and farther, less indicates a situation where no real measurement is possible. "He's less mad today than he was yesterday." Fewer indicates there's an actual quantity involved. "Hey, I got few gumdrops than Joe!"

I've edited hundreds of thousands of words over my career. I've also watched thousands of movies and television shows. These grammatical mistakes show up all the time.