LECTURE 1
Overview of Grammar: Deviant
Usage and Common Errors
Adika (2011); Bailey (2015, pages 142-146)
DEVIANT USAGE AND COMMON
ERRORS
 The
use of words and expressions that
depart from accepted practice. When
such wrong usage become persistent the
quality of your writing suffers.
 This lecture seeks to draw your attention
to such errors with the view to helping
you to avoid them.
Outline
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Misplaced modifiers
Dangling modifiers
Comma splices
Split infinities
Pronoun-antecedent agreement
Rambling sentences
Double subject
Sentence fragments
Parallel structures
Subject-verb agreement
Confusing words
Misplaced modifiers
A misplaced modifier is a word, phrase or
clause that is improperly separated from
the word it modifies or describes.
 Simply put, a word or a phrase apparently
modifying an unintended word because of
its placement in a sentence.
 Sentences with this error often sound
awkward and confusing.
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Example:
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E.g.1) On her way home, Akosua found a
gold man’s watch.
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The sentence above would suggest that a
gold man owns a watch.
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Misplaced modifiers are usually corrected
by moving the modifier to a more
appropriate place in the sentence,
generally next to the word it modifies.
Example:
E.g. 2) On her way home, Akosua found a
man’s gold watch.
 The modifier ‘gold’ has now been placed
next to the word it modifies, that is
‘watch’.
 We can now say the modifier has been
correctly placed.
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There are several kinds of misplaced
modifiers.
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Misplaced adjectives
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Misplaced adverbs
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Misplaced phrases
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Misplaced clauses
Misplaced adjectives
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They are incorrectly separated from the
nouns they modify and almost always
distort the intended meaning.
E.g. 3) Kweku ate a cold dish of cereal for
breakfast.
 The word ‘cold’ is a misplaced adjective
that modifies the noun ‘dish’.
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Correction
The error of a misplaced adjective is
corrected by placing the adjective next to
the noun it modifies.
 E.g. 4) Kweku ate a bowl of cold cereal for
breakfast.
 The word ‘cold’ is now a correctly placed
adjective that modifies ‘cereal’.
 Sentences like these are common in everyday
speech.
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Placement of adverbs
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Wrongly placed adverbs in a sentence can
change the meaning of the sentence.
E.g. 5) We ate the lunch that we bought
slowly. (incorrect)
 This sentence suggests that ‘we bought
lunch slowly’.
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Placement of adverbs (correction)
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To correct the meaning, move the adverb
‘slowly’ near or next to the verb ‘ate’.
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E.g. 6) We slowly ate the lunch we bought.
(correct)
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Watch out for adverbs such as only, just,
nearly, and almost. They are often
misplaced and cause an unintended
meaning.
Misplaced phrases
This may cause a sentence to sound
awkward and may create a meaning that
does not make sense.
 E.g. 7) Adwoa sold the food to ‘the
customer with fresh meat’.
 This sentence implies that the customer has
a skin made of fresh meat or…
 To clarify the meaning, put the phrase
next to the noun they are supposed to
modify.
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Misplaced phrases (correction)
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E.g. 8) Adwoa sold the ‘food with fresh meat’
to the customer.
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The dealer sold the Cadillac to ‘the buyer
with leather seats’. (incorrect)
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The dealer sold ‘the cadillac with leather
seats’ to the buyer. (correct)
Dangling modifiers
When a modifier occurs without the item
that it modifies, it is referred to as a
dangling modifier.
 That is, the item to be modified is missing
from the clause or sentence.
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Dangling modifiers
E.g. 9) When nine years old, my mother
enrolled in medical school.
 ‘When nine years old’ is a dangling modifier.
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Eg 10) Walking to the movies, the cloudburst
drenched Jim.
 This sentence suggests that ‘the
cloudburst is walking to the movies’ even
though a possible walker Jim is
mentioned.
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How to correct dangling modifiers.
Dangling modifiers can be corrected in
two general ways.
Correction method 1
 Leave the modifier as it is.
 Change the main part of the sentence so
that it begins with the term actually modified.
 This change will put the modifier next to the
term it modifies.
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Dangling modifiers
E.g. 11) Walking to the movies, the
cloudburst drenched Jim. (incorrect)
 E.g. 12) Walking to the movies, Jim was
drenched by the cloudburst. (correct)
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Dangling modifiers
Correction method 2
 Change the dangling modifier phrase to a
subordinate clause, creating a subject and verb.
 Leave the rest of the sentence as it is.
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E.g. 13) When nine years old, my mother
enrolled in medical school. (incorrect)
E.g. 14) When I was nine years old, my mother
enrolled in medical school.(correct)
Comma splices
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Two sentences or independent clauses
that are incorrectly joined by a comma.
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E.g. 15) The internet has made the world
smaller, you can meet people everywhere.
Three options for comma splice
revision
A) Use a comma and a coordinating
conjunction (and, or, nor, so, yet etc.).
 E.g. 16) The internet has made the world
smaller, so you can meet people everywhere.
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B) Use a semicolon.
 E.g. 17) The internet has made the world
smaller; you can meet people everywhere.
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Comma splices ( continuation)
C) Treat the clauses as separate
sentences.
 E.g. 18) The internet has made the world
smaller. You can meet people everywhere.
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Split infinitives
A split infinitive is a grammatical
construction in which a word or phrase
divides the to and the bare infinitive verb.
 The infinitive of a verb is the form given in
the dictionary where no specific subject is
indicated. In English, it is always
characterized by the word ‘to’. E.g., to play,
to bribe, to eat, to find, to laugh.
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Split infinitives (continuation)
A split infinitive occurs when the ‘to’ is
separated from its verb by other words.
 Usually, it is sufficient to move the
offending word so it comes either before
or after the infinitive.
 E.g. 19) Kwame’s teacher told him to never
look back. (incorrect)
 E.g. 20) Kwame’s teacher told him never
to look back. (correct)
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Split infinitives examples
E.g. 21) She told me I had to quickly finish
the sandwich. (incorrect)
 E.g. 22) she told me I had to finish the
sandwich quickly. (correct)
 E.g. 23) I was told to always pay attention in
class. (incorrect)
 E.g. 24) I was told always to pay attention in
class. (correct)
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Clear pronoun reference
A pronoun is a word used to stand for or
take the place of a noun.
 A pronoun should refer clearly to one,
unmistakable noun coming before the
pronoun. This is called pronoun
antecedent.
 It is very easy to create a sentence that
uses a pronoun without a clear,
unmistakable noun antecedent.
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Clear pronoun reference (E.g.)
E.g. 25) After putting the disk in the cabinet,
Kwame sold it.
 The pronoun ‘it’ does not have a clear
noun antecedent.
 As a result, the reader cannot know for
sure whether Kwame sold the disk or the
cabinet.
 Such errors, called faulty or vague
pronoun reference can confuse readers
and obscure intended meaning.
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Clear pronoun reference
There are three major pronoun
reference errors:
 Too many antecedents
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 Hidden
 No
antecedents
antecedent at all.
Too many antecedents
A pronoun should have only one antecedent.
The antecedent should be clear and
unmistakable.
 E.g. 25) Take the radio out of the car and fix it.
 Anyone who reads this sentence would not
know exactly which item to be fixed.
 In the above example, faulty or vague
pronoun reference occurs because the
pronoun ‘it’ has two possible noun
antecedents.
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Too many antecedents
To fix the problem:
 A) Substitute a noun for the pronoun and
 B) Rephrase the sentence.
E.g. 26) Take the radio out of the car and fix
the radio.
Or
 E.g. 27) Take the radio out of the car and fix
the car.
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Hidden antecedents
Faulty pronoun reference errors also
occur when the pronoun’s antecedent
functions as an adjective rather than a
noun.
 In such cases, the true antecedent is
hidden or obscured from the reader
because it has been subordinated to
another noun.
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Hidden antecedents (E.g.)
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E.g. 28) The fufu dish was empty, but we
were tired of eating it anyway.
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We might think that the fufu dish was
being eaten because ‘dish’ appears to be
the antecedent for the pronoun ‘it’.
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E.g. 29) The fufu dish was empty, but we
were tired of eating fufu anyway.
Pronoun antecedents
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A pronoun can fall either before or after
the noun it refers to. If the pronoun
comes afterward, the noun it refers to is
called the antecedent. The antecedent of
any sentence must be clear for readers to
easily comprehend.
Errors relating to pronoun
antecedents.
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Ambiguous pronouns
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Absent antecedents
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Loose antecedents
Ambiguous pronouns
One error is using a pronoun when the
antecedent is unclear.
 E.g. 30) Akosua discussed the new strategy
with Jill. She decided to proceed as planned.
Who decided to proceed as planned?
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E.g. 31) After she discussed the new strategy
with Jill, Akosua decided to proceed as
planned.
Absent antecedents
E.g. 32) Kojo says the course is fun to teach
because it’s small, and they are motivated.
 ‘they’ presumably refers to students, but
the antecedent noun is absent.
 E.g. 33) Kojo says the course is fun to teach,
because it’s small and the students are
motivated. (correct)
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Loose antecedents
A common pronoun reference error is
having a pronoun such as ‘this’, ‘that’, ‘it’ or
‘which’, referring loosely to an idea
expressed, rather than to a specific noun.
 E.g. 34) The company concealed financial
losses.This caused investors to damp the
stock.
 E.g. 35) The company concealed financial
losses.That caused investors to dump the
stock.
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Loose antecedents
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E.g. 36) The company concealed financial losses.
It caused investors to dump the stock.
In these sentences, note the lack of specific
antecedent noun for ‘this’, ‘that’, and ‘it’
Corrected.
The company concealed financial losses.This
accounting fraud caused investors to dump the
stock.
The pronoun ‘this’ clearly refers to the noun
‘fraud’.
Rambling sentences
Rambling sentences are sentences that
contain several clauses connected by
coordinating conjunctions such as ‘and’,
‘or’, ‘but’, ‘yet’, ‘nor’, and ‘so’.
 A rambling sentence may appear to follow
the technical rules of grammar but the
sentence as a whole is wrong because it
rambles or runs-on.
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Rambling sentences
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E.g. 37) I wanted to eat fried rice but I
realised that my money wasn’t enough so I
thought about buying yam but then I realised
that I didn’t feel like eating yam but I felt like
eating rice so I walked back to my hostel for
some money and I then realised that I had
left my key in school so I was confused so I
was very hungry and I didn’t know what to
do.
Rambling sentences
Rambling sentences as we saw above are
exceedingly long and contain too many
independent clauses.
 The purpose of a sentence is to state a
single idea or a small set of related ideas.
 A rambling sentence states many ideas.
Correction.
 Take out all the coordinating conjunctions
that separate complete, distinct thoughts
and then replace them with periods.
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Double subjects
Sentences that contain double subjects
 This error is mostly committed in our
speech language.
 E.g. 38) My hometown it is very big.
 In this sentence, ‘it’ is a pronoun which
represents ‘my hometown’
 It is not correct to use both in the sentence.
 E.g. 39) My hometown is very big.
Double subjects (Other examples)
E.g. 40) My sister she is a nurse. (incorrect)
 E.g. 41) My sister is a nurse. (correct)
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E.g. 42) The mountains we visited them were
beautiful. (incorrect)
 E.g. 43) The mountains we visited were
beautiful. (correct)
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Sentence fragments
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Sentence fragment refers to a group of
words that looks like a sentence, but is not.
To qualify as a sentence, a group of words
needs to have at least one independent
clause.
An independent clause is any group of words
that contains both a subject and a verb and
can stand on its own.
Sentence fragments never have independent
clauses, but have dependent clauses or
phrases.
Sentence fragment
They can look like real sentences because
they begin with a capital letter and end
with a period.
 Fragments do not form a complete
thought.
 A sentence fragment is like having only
half of the pieces to a puzzle. Without all
the pieces, you will not have the whole
picture.
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Sentence fragment
Where they are found
 They usually appear before or after the
independent clauses to which they
belong.
 E.g. 44) When we got in the car. We rolled
down the window.
 ‘When we got in the car’ is a sentence
fragment; it is dependent on the
independent clause that follows it.
Sentence fragment
Correction:
 E.g. 45) When we got in the car, we rolled
down the window. (correct)
Subject-verb agreement
One important rule to remember when
forming sentences is to make subjects and
verbs agree.
 While this seems like an apparent or
obvious rule, it is often overlooked.
 We will discuss simple rules for
remembering how subjects and verbs
should agree.
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Subject-verb agreement
 1) A
singular subject always takes a
singular verb. Use either the –s or –es
ending of the present tense of a verb
when the subject is in the third person.
 E.g. 46) The cat plays with the toy.
 E.g. 47) The girl wishes for a doll on her
birthday.
Subject-verb agreement
 2) A
plural subject always takes a plural
verb.
 E.g. 48) The dogs play in the yard.
 When
using compound subjects, a plural
verb is used with a compound subject.
 E.g. 49) A dog and a cat are usually enemies.
Subject-verb agreement
 An
exception to the rule above is when
the compound subject conveys a singular
idea.
 E.g. 50) The athletic trainer and graduate
student is Bill Smith.
 When the compound subject contains ‘or’,
‘nor’, ‘neither...nor’, ‘not…but’, ‘not only…but
also’, make the verb agree in number and in
person with the nearer subject.
Subject-verb agreement
E.g. 51) Neither the windows nor the door
needs to be painted.
 E.g. 52) Not the builder but the maids clean
the house.
 3) Verbs always agree with the subject in
the sentence even if there is a phrase or
clause between them.
 E.g. 53) The trees as well as the shrubbery
are losing their leaves.
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Subject-verb agreement
E.g. 54)The doctor in addition to his nurses has
the night off.
 E.g. 55) The farmer along with the cows rises
early.
 4) There are two rules to remember when
referring to groups.
 Use a singular verb when the subject is a
collective noun which is referring to the group as
a unit. Such collective nouns name a group or
class: congregation, flock, jury, family.
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Subject-verb agreement
E.g. 56) The congregation is made up of
Christians.
 An exception is made when using scissors
or trousers which both take a plural verb
except when used after ‘pair’
 E.g. 57) The scissors are on the table.
 E.g. 58) The pair of scissors is blunt.
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Subject-verb agreement
 5) When
using indefinite pronouns, use
singular verbs. Such indefinite pronouns
include: anybody, anyone, each, either,
everybody, everyone, neither, somebody.
 E.g. 59) Everyone in the room smells the
disgusting odour.
 E.g. 60) Neither was charged with the crime.
Parallel structure/parallelism
The balance of two or more elements in a
sentence
 Elements in a sentence are parallel when
one construction (or one part of speech)
matches another: a phrase and a phrase, a
clause and a clause, a verb and a verb, a
noun and a noun and so forth.
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Parallel constructions
Parallel structures or constructions occur with
coordinating conjunctions. (and, or, nor, but,
yet)
Parallel constructions:
 E.g. 61) At University of Ghana, cheating can
result in suspension or even expulsion from
school.
Underlying Structure: At University of Ghana,
cheating can result in (noun) or even (noun)
from school.
Parallel constructions with
coordinating conjunctions
Non parallel structures:
 E.g. 62) At University of Ghana, cheating can
result in suspension or even be expelled from
school.
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Underlying structure: At University of Ghana,
cheating can result in (noun) or even (verb
phrase)
Parallel constructions with
correlative conjunctions
Correlative conjunctions (e.g.: either/or,
neither/nor, not only/but also, both/and,
whether/or)
Not parallel:
 E.g. 63) Selasi is not only very beautiful but
also is very intelligent.
 The words very beautiful directly follow
not only, so very intelligent should follow
but also. Repeating the extra verb creates
an unbalanced effect.
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Parallel constructions with
correlative conjunctions
Parallel construction:
 E.g. 64) Selasi is not only very beautiful but
also very intelligent.
Parallel construction in a series
Not parallel:
 E.g. 65) The two girls enjoyed dancing,
swimming and going to the mall.
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Underlying structure: The two girls
enjoyed (noun), (noun), and (verb phrase).
Parallel construction in series
Parallel:
 E.g. 66) The two girls enjoyed dancing,
swimming and shopping.
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Underlying structure: The two girls
enjoyed (noun), (noun) and (noun).
Three-step method to parallelism
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What part of speech is being used? Is it a
noun, a verb or a phrase?
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In what form or tense does the part of
speech exist?
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How can I convert the items in the
sentence into the grammatical format?
Confusing words
Words that sound confusing
 Examples
 A) Accept / Except
 Accept is a verb meaning to receive.
 Except is usually a preposition that denotes
exclusion.
 B) Affect / Effect
 Affect is a verb that means to influence
 Effect is either a noun meaning result or it is
a verb meaning to bring about.
Confusing words (continuation)
Farther / further
 Farther usually describes distance.
 Further suggests a quantity or degree.
 Fewer / less
 Fewer refers to items that can be counted.
 Less refers to items that cannot be
counted.
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Confusing words (continuation)
 Who’s / whose
 Who’s is a contraction of ‘who is’.
 Whose is a possession pronoun.
 Your / you’re
 Your is possessive
 You’re is a contraction of ‘you are’.
 Loose / lose
 Loose is an adjective meaning ‘not secure’.
 Lose is a verb meaning the opposite of win.
Lose also means ‘misplace’.
REFERENCES
Adika, G. S. K. (2011). Deviant usage and
confusing words. Accra: Black Mask.
 Quirk, R. & Greenbaum, S. (1973). A
university grammar of English. Longman.
 http://www.canberra.edu.au/studyskills/lea
rningoral
 http://people.ucsc.edu/~pullum/goldenrule
s.html
 http://pne.people.si.umich.edu/PDF/howto
talk.pdf
