Essential Grammar Rules Every Writer Should Know

Grammar can sometimes feel like a never-ending set of rules that’s easy to not give two hoots about. But the reality is, mastering English grammar is essential if you want to improve your writing—and even your career. 

According to a study from Harvard Business Review, professionals with fewer grammar errors on their profiles achieve higher positions, and those who make fewer grammar mistakes get more promotions over time!

Convinced you need to freshen up your grammar? Here are some essential grammar rules to improve your writing and how you are perceived in the working world. 

1. Subject-Verb Agreement

One of the most fundamental grammar rules is subject-verb agreement. In simple terms, your verb must match your subject in number. Getting this grammatical rule wrong can instantly make your writing look sloppy so here are some important points to remember: 

• A singular subject takes a singular verb, while a plural subject takes a plural verb. So ‘the cat runs to the door’ and ‘the cats run to the door’ are both correct. 
• Collective nouns can be tricky. Treat them as singular when the group acts as a unit (for example, ‘the team is playing well’) and plural when the members act individually (for example, ‘The team are arguing among themselves’). 
• In ‘either/or’ and ‘neither/nor’ constructions, the verb agrees with the closer subject. For example, ‘Neither the teacher nor the students were prepared for the test.’
• One thing to keep in mind is that auxiliary verbs like ‘is,’ ‘have,’ and ‘do’ also need to agree with the subject. For example, in the sentence ‘She has finished her homework,’ the auxiliary verb ‘has’ agrees with the singular subject ‘she.’ 
• Don’t be fooled by phrases between the subject and verb. The verb should still agree with the main subject. So, ‘The box of chocolates were delicious’ is wrong, but ‘The box of chocolates was delicious’ is correct.

2. Active Voice vs Passive Voice

The choice between active and passive voice can significantly impact the clarity and directness of your writing. While both have their place, understanding when to use each will improve your writing.

Active voice occurs when the subject of the sentence performs the action. Passive voice, on the other hand, happens when the subject receives the action. Here’s what you need to know:

1. Active voice is generally more direct and engaging. Compare ‘The chef prepared the meal’ (active) with ‘The meal was prepared by the chef’ (passive). The active version is more concise and dynamic.
2. Use active voice to emphasise the doer of the action. For example, in the sentence, ‘The team won the match’, you’re focusing on the team’s achievement.
3. Passive voice can be useful when the doer is unknown or unimportant or when you want to emphasise the recipient of the action. You might say, ‘The building was constructed in 1890’ if the architect is unknown or irrelevant to your point.
4. Avoid overusing the passive voice, as it can make your writing seem vague or wordy. Instead of ‘Mistakes were made’, try ‘We made mistakes’.
5. In scientific writing, passive voice is often used to maintain objectivity, but this is changing in many disciplines. Rather than ‘It was observed that…’, more journals now accept ‘We observed that…’.

Remember, while active voice is often preferred for its clarity and directness, selective use of passive voice can add variety and emphasis to your writing.

3. Use Commas Correctly

Commas, those tiny punctuation marks, play a crucial role in structuring sentences and clarifying meaning. Misused commas can lead to confusion, run-on sentences, or unintended meanings. Here are some essential rules for proper comma usage:

1. Use commas to separate items in a list. When you’re writing about your shopping trip, you might say, ‘I bought apples, oranges, and bananas’.
2. Place a comma after introductory elements. If you’re describing your day, you could write, ‘After the meeting, we went for lunch’.
3. Use commas before coordinating conjunctions (and, but, or) when joining two independent clauses. You might express a change of plans by writing, ‘I wanted to go for a walk, but it started raining’. Be careful not to misplace the comma incorrectly, as in ‘I wanted to go for a walk but, it started raining’.
4. Use commas to set off non-essential information in a sentence. When mentioning a family member, you could write, ‘My brother, who lives in London, is visiting next week’.
5. Don’t use a comma to separate a subject from its verb. Instead of ‘The long, winding road, led to the old house’, write ‘The long, winding road led to the old house’.
6. Use commas in dates and addresses. A historically significant date might be written as ‘On 4 July, 1776, the Declaration of Independence was signed’.
7. Be careful with comma splices – don’t use a comma alone to join two independent clauses. Rather than ‘It was raining, we stayed indoors’, write ‘It was raining, so we stayed indoors’.

Remember, when in doubt, read your sentence aloud. Often, you can hear where a comma is needed for clarity or emphasis.

4. Sentence Fragments and Run-On Sentences

Proper sentence structure is crucial for clear communication. Two common errors are sentence fragments and run-on sentences. Let’s explore how to identify and correct these issues:

Sentence Fragments: A fragment occurs when an incomplete thought is punctuated as a full sentence. It typically lacks a subject, a verb, or both. Consider this fragment: ‘While walking to the store’. It leaves the reader wondering what happened during that walk. To fix it, we could write, ‘While walking to the store, I met an old friend’.

Run-On Sentences: Run-on sentences happen when two or more independent clauses are joined without proper punctuation or conjunctions. Instead of writing ‘I went to the store I bought some milk’, which is a run-on, you could correct it to ‘I went to the store, and I bought some milk’.

To avoid these errors:

1. Ensure each sentence has a subject and a verb.
2. Check that each sentence expresses a complete thought.
3. Use proper punctuation or conjunctions to join independent clauses.
4. Read your writing aloud to catch awkward constructions.

4. Pronoun-Antecedent Agreement

Pronouns must agree with the noun (antecedent) they are replacing, both in number and gender. This rule helps avoid confusion and ensures your writing flows smoothly. Consider this incorrect sentence: ‘Each student must bring their book to class’. The singular noun ‘student’ doesn’t agree with the plural pronoun ‘their’.

To correct this, you could write: ‘Each student must bring his or her book to class’. Or, to avoid gender specificity: ‘All students must bring their books to class’.

This rule is often overlooked but is essential for clear, polished writing.

Key points to remember:

1. Singular antecedents require singular pronouns. For example: ‘The cat licked its paw’, not ‘The cat licked their paw’.
2. Plural antecedents need plural pronouns. You would say, ‘The children played with their toys’, not ‘The children played with its toys’.
3. Be consistent in your use of pronouns throughout a piece of writing. If you start with ‘one’, continue with ‘one’, not ‘you’ or ‘they’.

6. Avoid These Apostrophe Mistakes

Apostrophes are primarily used to show possession or to form contractions. However, they are often misused, so let’s explore the rules for using apostrophes correctly:

1. Possession for plural nouns: If the plural noun already ends in ‘s’, just add an apostrophe after the ‘s’. For example, ‘The girls’ dresses’ (referring to dresses belonging to multiple girls). If the plural doesn’t end in ‘s’, add ‘s as with singular nouns: ‘The children’s toys’.
2. Forming contractions: Use an apostrophe to replace omitted letters in contractions. ‘It’s raining’ is correct when you mean ‘It is raining’. Be careful not to write ‘Its raining’, which is incorrect.
3. Possessive pronouns: Remember that possessive pronouns (like its, hers, theirs) never use apostrophes. ‘The cat licked its paw’ is correct, not ‘it’s paw’.
4. Decades and plural letters: When referring to decades, it’s acceptable to write ‘1980’s’ or ‘1980s’. For plural letters, use an apostrophe to avoid confusion: ‘Mind your p’s and q’s’.
5. Joint possession: When showing joint possession, only the last noun gets an apostrophe: ‘Jack and Jill’s pail’.
6. Individual possession: For individual possession, each noun gets an apostrophe: ‘Jack’s and Jill’s buckets’ (they each have their own).

Common mistakes to avoid:

• Using ‘it’s’ (which means ‘it is’ or ‘it has’) when you mean ‘its’ (possessive).
• Adding apostrophes to possessive pronouns (yours, hers, ours, theirs).

7. Choose The Right Article For Your Sentences

Articles are small but crucial words in English that come before nouns. They are ‘a’, ‘an’, and ‘the’.

These tiny words play a big role in specifying whether we’re talking about something general or specific. ‘A’ and ‘an’ are called indefinite articles, used for general or non-specific nouns. ‘The’ is called a definite article, used for specific or particular nouns. 

Here are some rules to remember when these tiny but important words: 

1. Use ‘a’ before consonant sounds and ‘an’ before vowel sounds. It’s about the sound, not the letter. That’s why we say ‘an hour’ (silent h) but ‘a unicorn’ (sounds like ‘you-nicorn’).
2. Use ‘the’ for specific things and ‘a/an’ for general ones. ‘I saw a dog’ (any dog) vs. ‘I saw the dog’ (a specific dog mentioned before).
3. Don’t use articles with uncountable nouns or plurals when speaking generally. ‘I love music’ not ‘I love the music.’ But one would say ‘The music at the concert was great’ because it’s about specific music.
4. Use ‘the’ with superlatives. ‘He’s the best player on the team.’
5. Don’t use articles before most countries, languages, meals, or games. For example: ‘France is beautiful’, ‘English is widely spoken’, ‘Breakfast is important’, ‘They play chess every weekend’.
6. Use ‘the’ with groups of countries (the United Kingdom), rivers (the Thames), oceans (the Pacific), and mountain ranges (the Alps).

8. Know What Letters To Capitalise

Capital letters are great for emphasising importance, marking the start of new ideas, and showing respect for certain words or concepts. Proper use of capital letters can significantly impact the meaning and tone of written English.

We all know to capitalise ‘I’ and the first word when we start a sentence, but here are a few extra rules that can trip writers up: 

1. Proper nouns get capitals. This includes names (John, Mary), places (Paris, Texas), days of the week, months, holidays, and languages (French, English).
2. Don’t capitalise after a colon unless it’s introducing a complete sentence. For example: ‘Three things are needed: milk, eggs, and bread.’ But: ‘Remember one rule: Always be kind to others.’
3. For titles, capitalise the first and last words, and all major words in between. ‘The Catcher in the Rye’ (don’t capitalise ‘in’ and ‘the’ in the middle).
4. Capitalise family titles when used as names. ‘I visited Aunt Sarah’ but ‘I visited my aunt’.
5. Capitalise directions when they refer to specific regions. ‘We’re travelling to the South’ but ‘Go south on this road’.
6. Don’t capitalise seasons unless they’re part of a proper noun. ‘I love spring’ but ‘I’m attending the Spring Festival’.

9. Pick The Right Preposition

Prepositions work like glue, connecting different parts of a sentence and providing crucial context. Without them, our sentences would lack important details about how things relate to each other. Here are some things to remember: 

1. Prepositions always take an object. For example, ‘The cat is on the roof.’ Here, ‘on’ is the preposition, and ‘roof’ is its object.
2. In formal writing, it’s traditionally advised not to end a sentence with a preposition, but rather to use the infinitive form. For example, ‘This is the book to which I referred’ instead of ‘This is the book I referred to’. However, ending sentences with prepositions is acceptable in casual speech. 
3. Use ‘in’ for enclosed spaces and ‘on’ for surfaces. ‘The book is in the drawer’ but ‘The book is on the table.’
4. ‘Between’ is for two things, ‘among’ for three or more. ‘Choose between chocolate and vanilla’ but ‘The prize was divided among the five winners.’
5. ‘Beside’ vs ‘Besides’: ‘Beside’ means ‘next to’ or ‘alongside,’ while ‘Besides’ means ‘in addition to’ or ‘moreover.’ For example, ‘Sit beside me’ vs ‘Besides English, she speaks French.’
6. ‘At’ vs ‘On’: Use ‘at’ for specific points (at the corner, at 3 o’clock) and ‘on’ for surfaces or days (on the table, on Monday). However, ‘at’ is used with ‘weekend’ (at the weekend).

10. Master Your Adjectives

Adjectives are words that describe or modify nouns and pronouns in a sentence. They typically answer questions like ‘What kind?’, ‘Which one?’, or ‘How many?’. In most cases, adjectives come before the noun they describe or after a linking verb.

1. Order matters! If you want to use more than one adjective to describe your noun, use this order: opinion, size, age, shape, colour, origin, material, purpose. For example, ‘A beautiful, big, old, round, red, Italian, glass, wine bottle’!
2. Use adjectives sparingly for maximum impact. Overuse can make writing feel cluttered.
3. Comparative and superlative forms:
   • Comparative forms compare two things. For short adjectives, add ‘-er’ (e.g., ‘bigger’). For longer ones, use ‘more’ (e.g., ‘more beautiful’).
   • Superlative forms compare three or more things, indicating the highest degree. For short adjectives, add ‘-est’ (e.g., ‘biggest’). For longer ones, use ‘most’ (e.g., ‘most beautiful’).
   • Example: ‘The small dog is cute. The medium dog is cuter (comparative). The tiny puppy is the cutest (superlative) of all.’
4. Some adjectives are absolute and can’t be compared. One can’t be ‘more unique’ or ‘very pregnant.’ These are binary states.

11. Bonus Point! Commonly Confused Words

In English, many words sound alike but have different meanings and uses. This similarity often leads to confusion and errors in writing. Let’s explore some of the most frequently confused word pairs and how to use them correctly:

1. There, Their, and They’re:  ‘There’ refers to a place or indicates existence: ‘The book is over there’ or ‘There are five apples in the bowl’. • ‘Their’ shows possession: ‘Their car is red’. • ‘They’re’ is a contraction of ‘they are’: ‘They’re going to the cinema’. In a single sentence: ‘They’re taking their children there for the holiday’.
2. Affect and Effect: • ‘Affect’ is usually a verb meaning to influence something: ‘The rain affected our plans’. • ‘Effect’ is typically a noun referring to the result of something: ‘The effect of the medicine was immediate’. • ‘Effect’ can occasionally be used as a verb meaning ‘to bring about’: ‘The new manager effected many changes’. Example: ‘The new policy affected employee morale, and its effects were noticeable immediately’.
3. Your and You’re: • ‘Your’ is possessive: ‘Your coat is on the chair’. • ‘You’re’ is a contraction of ‘you are’: ‘You’re going to be late’. In context: ‘You’re welcome to borrow your sister’s book’.
4. Its and It’s: • ‘Its’ is possessive: ‘The dog wagged its tail’. • ‘It’s’ is a contraction of ‘it is’ or ‘it has’: ‘It’s going to rain today’. Combined usage: ‘It’s clear that the company has changed its policy’.
5. To, Too, and Two: • ‘To’ is a preposition: ‘I’m going to the shop’. • ‘Too’ means ‘also’ or ‘excessively’: ‘I want to come too’ or ‘The music is too loud’. • ‘Two’ is the number 2: ‘I have two cats’. In a sentence: ‘I’m going to buy two books too’.

Remember, context and tense are key in determining which word to use. When in doubt, try replacing the word with its full meaning to see if the sentence still makes sense. For instance, if you can replace ‘there’ with ‘in that place’, you’re using it correctly.

Improve Your English Grammar, One Rule at a Time

Mastering grammar isn’t just about memorising rules; it’s about unlocking the true power of the English language to make your communication clearer, more professional, and incredibly persuasive. Imagine the impact of crafting sentences that not only convey your message but do so with confidence and precision. 

It doesn’t matter whether you’re sending an important email, or writing the next Lord of the Rings, these English grammar rules are your toolkit for writing that stands out. Not to mention, it can help you get further in your career!

So, embrace these rules and watch as your writing becomes stronger and more effective each day. Your words have the potential to shine—let them!