Review: 100 Writing Mistakes To Avoid

100 Writing Mistakes to Avoid is the first book to come out of Daily Writing Tips, owned by Daniel Scocco, of Daily Blog Tips fame. Authored by Maeve Maddox, chief editor on the DWT site, the 45 page ebook offers ‘a practical guide to 100 common mistakes of spelling, usage, grammar and punctuation’. Since I’m a bit hung up on these things (and used to write for DWT once upon a time), I could hardly wait to dive in.

A Time Saver For Writers

The short introduction lays out the purpose of the book — to save writers time by giving them a quick way to identify and avoid common errors in written English. I was pleased to see that the book included information on British and American usage, where this differed, as well as points of contention, all of which are indicated with asterisks. Be warned, this is not the place to go to learn grammar — it’s intended for those who are familiar with common grammatical terms.

What’s Inside

100 Writing Mistakes to Avoid is divided into four sections: spelling mistakes, usage mistakes, grammar mistakes and punctuation mistakes. The layout is simple and clear. There’s a number followed by the words and expressions being discussed (in red), examples of incorrect and correct usage, followed by a couple of sentences giving meanings or explanations.

This book is for you if you’ve ever wondered:

• what the rule is on article use before an acronym

• which verb form to use with ‘either’

• whether you can end a sentence with a preposition

• where to put commas (there are several points on that in the final section).

There’s just one thing that would make 100 Writing Mistakes to Avoid even more useful: a clickable index of all the points, so I could easily go straight to the one I want to research.

How I Will Use It

Truth to tell, I don’t have many problems with the issues raised here, but there’s always that moment when you have a moment of self-doubt. This book will make it easier to identify and avoid mistakes which might make our clients think less of us. As a British writer who often writes for an American audience, it’s useful to have guidance on a few stylistic points that may feel wrong to me but may be right for my readers.

100 Writing Mistakes to Avoid is available from Daily Writing Tips at $19.99.