Common errors: Seven tips to improve your grade

1. New paragraph before and after quotations

2. Adverbs. Kill them.

3. Avoid starting your sentences this way. It delays the noun and verb of the sentence:

·      There is, there are, there have been.

·      Also, "According to ...

4. Lowercase titles after names. If it's a long title, place it after the name:

•    President Trump
•    Donald Trump, president of the United States
•    Associate Director for the School of Biological Sciences Mary Jones
•    Mary Jones, associate director for the School of Biological Sciences, said ...

5. No “we” or “our” in news stories unless in quotation marks.

6. Don’t shift from “said” to “says” and back again. Stay in one tense – past or present.

7. Comma splices are run-on sentences. Let's look at these.