Punctuation and Spelling

EN Study

• Words commonly misspelled
  • Common errors
  • Words with similar spelling but different meanings
  • Words with the same pronunciation but different spelling and meaning
• Punctuation
  • Commas
  • Apostrophes
  • Colons and semicolons

Words commonly misspelled

Common errors

• accommodation, address, advertisement, beginning, committee, conscience, curiosity, disappear, disappointed, embarrassed, faithfully, favourite, forbidden, government, guarantee, immediately, independentm jealous, journey, manufacture, marriage, medicine, necessary, pollution, prefer, preferred, pronunciation, quiet, quite, receive, recommend, responsibility, separate, sincerely, successful, truly, unconscious, unfortunately, unnecessary, writing

Words with similar spelling but different meanings

Words with the same pronunciation but different spelling and meaning

Punctuation

Commas

• Comman are used to separate items in a list, before question tags, and after and around certain linking words
  • I bought apples, oranges, bananas(,) and pears.
  • Sue is a lovely girl, isn't she?
  • If you see Kevin, tell him I'm looking for him.
  • Broadly speaking, I think we should go ahead with the plan.
  • I do not, however, agree with you.

Apostrophes

• Apostrophes are used to show possession and plurals of letters
  • It's warm today.
  • Jack's car is red.
  • The players' entrance.
  • There are four i's in the word "mississippi".

Colons and semicolons

• Colons introduce a list or examples
  • There were two possible solutions: either we could wait or we could leave.
• Semi-colons divide parts of long sentences or long phrases in a list
  • There were two possible courses of action open to him; after some though, he decided to...