Good spelling and grammar in a newsfeed gives potential customers a good impression and increases your search rankings, but how easy is it to avoid making mistakes?
Here are just five of the common mistakes:
Apostrophes
Many writers use apostrophes that are simply not needed. For example, how often have you read something about the ‘1960’s’?
Who and Whom
Contrary to what some people believe, these are not interchangeable. Whom is an objective pronoun (like “him”), while who is a subjective pronoun (like “he”). What’s more, incorrectly using whom not only makes you wrong—it also makes you sound pompous.
Me and I
When another person is involved, people often confuse me and I. An easy way to check is to remove the other person from the sentence. For example, “Things went badly for [Boris and] I” is then clearly wrong.
Collective nouns
These are frequently abused when talking about companies and organisations. When an organisation acts as a collective, as most do, it takes a singular form. All too often, words such as “they” are used to refer to a single company.
Dangling Participles
These are common pitfalls for writers, who often don’t notice them because in their minds, there is no confusion. These errors occur when it’s unclear what a modifier applies to. Take this sentence for example: “After barking for hours, the man walked his dog.” Who was barking?
Remember, if you lack the resources to produce an error-free website newsfeed in house, outsourcing it to a news writing service can also free up valuable time.
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