I do a lot of writing for the various jobs I have, including writing this blog! So, I have many opportunities to make written mistakes in my work, and guess what, I make a lot of mistakes!  Thank goodness for spellcheck and also for proofreaders, but even with these safeguards, some of my writing mistakes still get through. You may have even caught a few of them in reading this blog over the last year and half.

It is important to know that we all make mistakes in our speaking (see my most recent post: Slips of the tongue and Freudian slips) and writing, even us native speakers. No one is perfect, even in their own native language, so how can we expect new learners of a language to be perfect either.  If you are learning English, I am sure you make mistakes in your writing too. Just so you don’t feel so bad about this I thought I would share with you some of the funny/simple/stupid mistakes I have made in my own writing just this weeks. These are the kind of mistakes that spellcheck doesn’t catch.  Some of these mistakes I caught on my own, but some of them others had to point out to me – I just missed them. In the end, all we can do is try and learn from our mistakes, and not make the same ones again, and again, and again :).

Here are some mistakes I have made recently. See if you can spot them. The corrected sentences are below.

1.    She sees her life coach twice a week.
2.    Benjamin has a number of quarky behaviors, including…
3.    He sleeps nightly form 8pm until 7am.
4.    I wonder if its on or off.
5.    No body was aware of the underlying problems.

Corrected sentences:

1.    She sees her life couch twice weekly.
2.    Benjamin has a number of quirky behaviors, including…
3.    He sleeps nightly from 8pm until 7am.
4.    I wonder if it’s on or off.
5.   Nobody was aware of the underlying problems.