If you are reading this article, I’m pretty sure you own a blog and you are constantly looking forward to improving it. Building and maintaining a healthy blog is no easy job. It requires hard work and patience, and also good grammar. Yes, you read that right – you need to have a good command over grammar to take your blog to the next level. People like to read articles which follow the rules of grammar without themselves realizing it. It is grammar that holds together the English language and enables people to understand what you are trying to convey properly. Using poor grammar can affect your blog in many ways – you will lack the flow of content in your blog posts, people may find your instructions confusing, brands and businesses may not want to work with you, you will lose potential business opportunities, other bloggers may feel uncomfortable linking back to your content or associating with you, search engines like Google won’t give your content any preference and your articles may be pushed down in SERPs, etc.
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Why you must care about grammar
Grammatical errors can make you look less professional as a writer and make your blog appear unreliable. You must fix these grammar errors and start writing like a PRO to gain your readers’ trust. Every blogger wants to be heard, right? That’s precisely why they want everyone to read their content. Imagine writing something out of the world and not having many people to read your content.
Have you ever been in the same situation and wondered why?
That’s because people don’t trust your knowledge and they don’t trust your credibility as a writer.
What’s the reason?
It is mainly because your content is full of grammatical mistakes and it makes you appear DUMB in front of your readers.
And let me tell you something, grammatical errors make your articles hard to read and understand, thereby turning off your readers immediately.
So, next time when you start writing a blog post, do check for the following errors.
Common grammatical mistakes bloggers make
Your and You’re
“Your” is a possessive pronoun, used to mainly show ownership or relationship with something. For example, your car, your shop, your blog.
Whereas “You’re” is a contraction for” you are”.
Confuse between the above two and your readers will be even more confused than you actually are.
It’s and Its
Again a very silly mistake that can lose your credibility as a writer if you are not careful.
“It’s” is a contraction for “it is” or it has, depending on the tense.
Its is a possessive pronoun, for example, ‘this place has lost its charm.”
There and Their
There is used for giving reference to a particular place, for instance, “Let’s go there,” “there is no water,” ” there’s no electricity.”
Whereas ‘their’ is a plural possessive pronoun, used to show ownership for more than one person. For example, “their cars” or “their bags”.
Affect and Effect
The thing to remember here is, Affect is a verb, whereas “Effect” is a noun. Affect means to influence something, effect means the result and impact of something.
Let me give you an example from Google to make it easier for you,
“You can’t affect the creepy poem by reading it, but you can enjoy the effect of a talking bird.”
Didn’t do it versus Didn’t did it
This is the most common error I see people making every day.
You shouldn’t use two past simple verb forms in the same function of a verb string.
Following are some examples to make it easier for your understanding.
I didn’t eat it. (correct)
I didn’t ate it. (wrong)
I didn’t kill her. (Correct)
I didn’t killed her. (wrong)
I didn’t steal your money. (correct)
I didn’t stole your money. (wrong).
These are the five biggest grammar mistakes that blog writers make. Don’t forget that proper grammar does matter and as a fellow blogger please do share this post with your blogging friends. In this post, I’ve highlighted just these five grammar mistakes though there are many others mainly because these are the most common grammatical mistakes I’ve come across in the blogging community. Other writing mistakes include spelling, punctuation, capitalization, tenses, using the apostrophe in the right place, etc.
How to fix Grammar mistakes
Luckily there’s an easy solution available out there. It doesn’t matter whether you write on your PC, tablets or smartphones, Grammarly has got you covered. Grammarly is a smart AI-powered web-based tool that can easily be installed on any device you use and helps you find and fix your spelling, punctuation and grammatical mistakes easily. Ever since I started using Grammarly, my writing has improved a lot. You may also want to check out my review of Grammarly where I have covered everything about Grammarly in detail.
Thus I hope that you found this post useful. Also, don’t forget to bookmark this page just in case you wanted to have a look at it once more before you start writing your next blog post. If you liked this post, I’m sure you would also like my post on how to write great blog posts every time.
As an English teacher it always drives me mad to see these mistakes. Thank you for pointing them out.
Hey Pascale, I can totally see why it drives you mad. Good thing they have got a good English language teacher like you, now they’ll be able to learn proper grammar. Happy teaching!
Tell this to spellchecker that changes things without warning after you hit send
Oops, but you can always give it a read and edit your post after publishing.
These are great tips, especially in our world of auto correct snafus. It’s best to give each bit of text a quick read to make sure your good grammar wasn’t automatically edited!
Hey Angela, I’m glad you like these tips. I’m already following your tip of giving each bit of text a quick read before hitting the publish button. But even then some mistakes creep in inadvertently. Right now, I’m using Grammarly and I find them pretty good. What do you say?
Hey, glad you came up with this! These are really common errors made even in day to day life and it gets really annoying at times ! Like if someone says, “I didn’t ate today! ” There is this sudden urge to correct them that flows in me but I just have to stop and let go.. so its wonderful you penned it down. 🙂
Hey Madhura, thanks for stopping by. I’m glad you like this post. I can totally relate to your experience. Most of the times I just keep my mouth shut because I don’t want people to term me as a Grammar Nazi.
Yesss!! GREAT TIPS!! 🙂
Thank you, Jessica. Glad you like them!
I so agree, but it does tend to add to my OCD-ness (yes, it’s okay, I know that’s not actually a word…..) about reading and re-reading my blog posts before posting! But as a language specialist numbers 1, 2, 3 and 4 would definitely be some of my grammatical pet hates!
Hey Sue, thanks for sharing your view on the subject with us. Bad grammar definitely puts off the readers. So, it’s worth reading and rereading your blog posts before hitting the publish button. I use Grammarly Chrome extension to work for me.
These are always things I look for when writing and editing a post . The your and you’re are the most problematic for writers I think. Enjoyed your post, visiting from Bloggers Pit Stop
Totally agree with you. Unfortunately, the easiest and the most commonly used words are often the most misunderstood. Glad that you enjoyed my post, Debbie. Keep visiting.
Thanks for the reminders. I think I have made some of these mistakes in the past, but worked to perfect my command of English grammar.
Awesome John, that’s the spirit of a true blogger – improving upon yourself and mastering the art of blogging. Your readers must be proud of you.
These grammar mistakes are obvious but you’re right, they’re pretty common. As someone whose second language is English, I can say there are other mistakes which are a lot more difficult to spot, such as the countable and uncountable nouns and which prepositions come after which verbs. And don’t get me started on phrasal verbs!
Greetings from the Blogger’s Pit Stop!
Hello Fabiola, I do agree with you that these grammatical mistakes are pretty obvious. And yes, there are definitely other mistakes which are difficult to spot. Some of them don’t even look like mistakes unless you know what you’re doing and have a good command over the language. But since not many of us (casual readers) can find out if at all there is anything wrong with the grammar, I’ve ignored that difficult part for a later date. And thank you for sharing your input with us.
I continue to be surprised at how often these mistakes happen, since most of these are basic. I can understand some of the more complex grammar issues but these should never happen. Affect and effect have always stumped me, but this explanation is the simplest I have read, thanks, it will be helpful.
Hey Aletha, I totally understand your point of view. Though these mistakes are very basic, it is always happening and even native English speakers make these mistakes sometimes. Anyway, I’m glad that you like this post.
Lovely to see you joining us again Antony. This post has been quite popular and we will feature it on the next Blogger’s Pit Stop.
Kathleen
Blogger’s Pit Stop
Awesome Kathleen, thanks for featuring it once again.
As a wordsmith, I take pride in using the correct grammar and punctuation. But we all make mistakes. Recently, I realized that I have been using “past/passed/pass” incorrectly. One of my biggest pet peeves with others is their incorrect use of the apostrophe instead of pluralizing their last name. Ex: The Carter’s instead of The Carters. Thanks for sharing on Traffic Jam Weekend!
Hey Kimberly, I apologize for the late reply. I value every comment on my blog made by my followers and other bloggers alike. It’s just that I was focused on other things and wasn’t able to get myself up to reply to all the comments.
And oh yes, thank you for sharing your experience with us! 🙂
Thank you For this Great information! It will help young people to use their grammar Correctly.
I am looking forward to reading some more useful content.
Good content.