Imagine working hard on your English paper and receiving an exemplary grade. Common sense tells us that hard work in school should always be rewarded with an A. In reality, students often overlook mistakes they aren’t aware of.
A grammar and spelling tool like CorrectEnglish checks for mistakes as you type so you can make corrections on the fly. Driven by Artificial Intelligence, CorrectEnglish is smart enough to understand over 63,000 advanced grammar rules. Try making that many grammar flashcards!
What is the ambitious student to do when they want to earn an A in their English class? First, download CorrectEnglish. Then, watch as it catches some of the common mistakes students make on school papers, such as:
- Affect vs. effect
- Every day vs everyday
- Unintentional plagiarism
- Mixed metaphors
- Incorrect spelling
Read on to learn more about how CorrectEnglish can help you perfect your school papers.
1. Affect Versus Effect
These two words are easy to mix up. Once you understand the difference between them, you’ll notice the mistake in other people’s writing more and more.
Affect is usually a verb. It means to impact or change.
Effect is usually a noun. It is the result of a change.
So, one might affect the results of a class council election by campaigning. The effect of a great campaign is winning the election.
2. Every Day Versus Everyday
These two are also easy to confuse. Just think of everyday as an adjective. It means “ordinary” or something that is seen every day.
Every day as two words simply means each day.
You might say, “I go to school almost every day. Homework is an everyday part of being a student.”
3. Unintentional Plagiarism
Plagiarizing work written by someone else can have terrible consequences. Some people even get expelled! However, most plagiarism is unintentional. Many students don’t know how to cite their sources correctly.
A writing tool that includes a plagiarism checker, such as CorrectEnglish, can help to ensure that you never plagiarize by comparing your work against articles on the web. That way, you can make sure your papers are always 100% original.
4. Mixed Metaphors
A metaphor is a figure of speech that’s not meant to be taken literally.
A mixed metaphor is when you accidentally combine two incompatible metaphors. The results are often pretty funny when you think about them. At the same time, you don’t want these in the assignments you submit.
An example of a mixed metaphor might be, “His words cut deeper than the icing on the cake.”
“Cut deeper than a knife” means that something is hurtful.
“Icing on the cake” means that something great happened after a series of other fortunate events. “Icing on the cake” can also be used sarcastically to mean, “Great, another problem I have to deal with.” But the mixed metaphor above doesn’t make any sense because icing is not very good at cutting other things.
5. Incorrect Spelling
Whether a spelling error is the result of a typo or not knowing the correct spelling of a word, this mistake looks bad on your school papers. Teachers are likely to mark your grade down if you have too many spelling errors because it shows that you didn’t take the time to use an online dictionary.
With CorrectEnglish, you can make sure every word is spelled the right way without ever having to leave the page you’re working on.
CorrectEnglish can even tell you when a word has two correct spellings! For example, “acknowledgment” and “acknowledgement” are both correct.
CorrectEnglish® is a browser tool and iOS/Android app that helps you easily correct writing mistakes by checking for contextual and spelling errors, word substitutions, and 63,000 advanced grammar rules. It works on your browser and on your Apple/Android device to help you fine-tune research papers, book reports, social media posts, and more. To learn more, visit www.correctenglish.com.
