Find the Error 37
(Extract adapted from a competition feature in a local newspaper)
What kind of mistake do you see? (Choose one:)
- apostrophes
- articles
- doesn't make sense
- punctuation
- singular / plural
- spelling
Answer: punctuation
Here's an example where the author has tried to use an apostrophe correctly,
but instead ended up using a single speech mark incorrectly. 'Baby of the
Year ‘05' should read: 'Baby of the Year ’05'. In the example the author has
put a single speech mark before '05' when they clearly meant to use an
apostrophe. The difference is that the tail of the apostrophe points to the left
and the tail of the single speech mark points to the right.
Some word-processing programs
help to make this a common error because when you type
apostrophe followed by '05' you will normally get: ‘05. This is because the
program assumes that you are writing something enclosed in single speech
marks and automatically provides you with the first part of the single speech
marks – which is not the apostrophe that you wanted. Sometimes it is
necessary to show the word-processing program who's boss!
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