Improper Contractions
• Never use could of, should of, would of. What you mean is could have, should have, would have; correct
contractions are could’ve, would’ve, should’ve.
• Try not to use contractions at all in formal writing.
Negatives
• You should only have one negative word per sentence. Example: I can’t do that.
• Negatives: not, don’t, can’t, won’t, shouldn’t, couldn’t, wouldn’t, didn’t, neither/nor, no, nothing.
Parallel Structure
• All items in a series need to follow the same structure:
• Incorrect: He stopped, listened a moment, then he locked the door.
• Correct: He stopped, listened a moment, then locked the door.
• Incorrect: They were singing, dancing, and looked at each other.
• Correct: They were singing, dancing, and looking at each other.
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