oid in
his compositions the frequent errors which imperceptibly corrupt even
the purest ordinary speech. As a general rule, it is well to give close
critical scrutiny to all colloquial phrases and expressions of doubtful
parsing, as well as to all words and usages which have a strained or
unfamiliar sound. The human memory is not to be trusted too far, and
most minds harbour a considerable number of slight linguistic faults and
inelegancies picked up from random discourse or from the pages of
newspapers, magazines, and popular modern books.

Types of Mistakes

Most of the mistakes of young authors, aside from those gross violations
of syntax which ordinary education corrects, may perhaps be enumerated
as follows.

(1) Erroneous plurals of nouns, as =vallies= or =echos=.

(2) Barbarous compound nouns, as =viewpoint= or =upkeep=.

(3) Want of correspondence in number between noun and verb where the
two are widely separated or the construction involved.

(4) Ambiguous use of pronouns.

(5) Erroneous case of pronouns, as =whom= for =who=, and vice versa,
or phrases like "between you and =I=," or "Let =we= who are loyal,
act promptly."

(6) Erroneous use of =shall= and =will=, and of other auxiliary
verbs.

(7) Use of intransitive for transitive verbs, as "he =was graduated=
from college," or vice versa, as "he =ingratiated= with the tyrant."

(8) Use of nouns for verbs, as "he =motored= to Boston," or "he
=voiced= a protest."

(9) Errors in moods and tenses of verbs, as "If I =was= he, I should
do otherwise," or "He said the earth =was= round."

(10) The split infinitive, as "=to= calmly =glide=."

(11) The erroneous perfect infinitive, as "Last week I expected =to
have met= you."

(12) False verb-forms, as "I =pled= with him."

(13) Use of =like= for =as=, as "I strive to write =like= Pope
wrote."

(14) Misuse of prepositions, as "The gift was bestowed =to= an
unworthy object," or "The gold was divided =between= the five men."

(15) The superfluous conjunction, as "I wish =for= you to do this."

(16) Use of words in wrong =senses=, as "The book greatly
=intrigued= me," "=Leave= me take this," "He was =obsessed= with the
idea," or "He is a =meticulous= writer."

(17) Erroneous use of non-Anglicised foreign forms, as "a strange
=phenomena=," or "two =stratas= of clouds."

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