Hey everyone! Welcome to my channel where I teach you ways to make money online
and become a freelancer. In today's video, I'm going to go over eight of the most
common mistakes that people make in written English and a lot of these
mistakes are the reason that many of you are not passing your transcription exams.
These are all very important to know if you want to improve your English writing
skills in your personal and professional life. Before we get started, I want to
mention that I posted a poll on my channel asking what people needed help
with the most. About fifty percent said they needed help with capitalization and
punctuation. Now capitalization and punctuation are
two huge topics to cover. I do cover them quickly in this video but I would like
to do two videos that are just on these topics. But since this channel is more
for how to make money, I ask you to subscribe to my new English Learning
Channel called Sparkle English and I will link that in the description below
and once I reach 200 subscribers there, I'll release my next English teaching
video. OK, so let's get started. So the common mistake number one is it's or
its. Many English speakers get confused about when to use it's or its. This is
even a common mistake for native English speakers. So the rule is you use an
apostrophe with it's only when the word means it is or it has. Without the
apostrophe, its means belonging to it. So example one: incorrect it's my birthday
tomorrow, because this should be it is. You have to have the apostrophe it's it
is my birthday tomorrow and here's another example. The dog was wagging its
tail. Now one trick is to try to say if you can see it with it is if it makes
sense so if I said the dog was wagging it is tail it doesn't make sense so it
has to be the dog was wagging its tail without the apostrophe. So this is for
example the girl was walking her dog. Her dog, the girl's dog, and this is the dog's
tail. The tail belongs to the dog so that's when we use its without the
apostrophe. Okay, so number two, have there there or there there there
and there are homophones. this means although they sound the same they are
spelled differently and have different uses knowing the difference between
these three is essential when transcribing so the first one there
there is the possessive case of the pronoun they
meaning belonging to them so example the boys left their bikes at school because
the bikes belong to the boys it's their bikes Carly and Joe are bringing their
computers to school tomorrow so just like before we had it's without the
apostrophe and that was also the possessive this is the same the dog's
tail its tail this is the boys bikes their bikes and you spell it like this
th e IR okay the next one is their like this th e re there is an adverb that
means in or at that place so example is Karen at the cinema no she is going
there tomorrow so she is going to that place tomorrow there is also used as a
pronoun introducing the subject of a sentence or clause examples there is a
chance I will win the prize there are two boys in my dance class okay so this
is when we use their th e re the next one is there and this is the easiest
because there is a contraction of the words they and R so there means they are
they are going skiing tomorrow afternoon they are going skiing she said that
they're not coming tomorrow so if you can replace the there with they are
that's a good hint that you should use an apostrophe and spell it like this
they are okay the third common error is people forgetting about the third person
as the third person singular normally in the present tense we add s to the end of
the verb in the third person for he she or it so examples
he loves Italian food she drinks tea before bed it look
like it's going to rain tomorrow make sure to put the s don't put he love
Italian food he loves so in the present tense we also have some rules if the
verb ends in SS x CH SH or the letter O we add es in the third person so Mary
kisses the man on his cheek we have to put es because this ends with SS the
mechanic fixes cars every Sunday it ends in X so yes the cat goes into the house
he watches TV every evening if the verb ends in consonant plus y we remove the Y
and add IES in the third person examples she carries the books to her
car so carry because it ends with a Y we have to replace that with IES carries
the same with study the boys studies for school every night study becomes studies
also important to form the negative in the present tense we use the auxiliary
do not the only variation is in the third-person where we use does not and
does has es so for example I do not go to nightclubs I don't go to nightclubs
but if it's she he or it we would say she does not study at home she doesn't
study at home not she do she does or she doesn't okay and also note that the verb
study remains the same we only modify the auxiliary verb when forming the
negative we don't put an s on the end of the verb in the negative form so you
don't say she does not studies you just say she
does not study this stays the same okay another one your and your again there
are also Homa phones this means again that although they sound the same they
are spelled differently and have different uses your is a contraction for
you are just like there they are you're going to bring the books to the office
later I'm talking on the phone and you're being too loud for me to hear all
of these you are and you're is a possessive
pronoun so we don't use the apostrophe and the e please bring your books to
class with you tomorrow I want them to finish their homework and I want you to
eat your dinner so these are all possessive my books his books her books
your books not you our books okay again another one that's very common people
make mistakes with is 2 2 or 2 2 can be a preposition we're going to the store
to can indicate an infinitive when it comes before a verb we want to go with
you tomorrow night ok but T double O 2 is an adverb that can mean excessively
when it comes before an adjective or adverb so I ate too much pasta for
dinner which means I ate more than I should have
excessively 2 is also a synonym for also so I ate too much at dinner too
so let's say your little brother says I ate too much dessert and you say me too
it means me also as well I also ate too much ok and then 2 is the easiest one
it's simply the number 2 I had two slices of pizza
she wrote two books last year okay you must remember to use Xillia are verbs
and negative sentences and questions what our exile yaari verbs easily are
verbs are the verbs B do have will when they are followed by another verb the
full verb in order to form a question and negative sentence a compound tense
or the passive so a lot of people might forget these words so for example how
you spell that word or where you go tomorrow you have to say how do you
spell that word where will you go tomorrow so do not forget to put these
auxiliary verbs especially when you're doing questions or negative sentences
more examples I know drink coffee every morning you'd
say I don't drink coffee every morning do not he drive to the party last night
you have to start with the axillary did he drive to the
party last night another incorrect she not angry you have
to say she isn't angry she is not angry okay now capitalization rule number one
always capitalized the first word of a sentence he is as easy the woman is
going to finish her taxes why is he talking to you like that so you always
start with the capital rule number two capitalized names and other proper nouns
examples my favorite singer is Justin Bieber you'd have to capitalize the name
Justin Bieber Donald Trump is a controversial person Donald and Trump
you would capitalize both of those because it's a name always capitalized
proper nouns in English a proper noun is a specific so not a generic name for a
particular person place or thing proper nouns are always capitalized in English
no matter where they fall in a sentence the names of cities countries
nationalities companies religions and political parties are also proper nouns
so you should capitalize them too so we have some examples of common nouns girl
city day month nationality religion none of these are capitalized but the
proper nouns which is the specific noun that all of these are capitalized so a
specific noun or proper noun for a girl Mary
so that would be capitalized Madrid capitalized Monday March Moroccan Muslim
okay all of these you have to capitalize
because they're all proper nouns some more sentence examples Jack is Christian
but his wife is Jewish Sarah works at Ford in Paris France so Ford is a
company so we would capitalize that and also a city country Nationa religions
okay rule 3 capitalize the first word of a
quote when the quote is a complete sentence so for example if you're
transcribing something and they say Joe asked do you want to come to the
conference tomorrow Lauren answered yes I would love to
because this inside the quote is a complete sentence
do you want to come to the conference tomorrow that's a complete question you
will and the after it says asked you put a comma then you have the quotes and
then you capitalize the first letter do you want to come and then Lauren
answered yes I would love to again this is a complete sentence so you would
capitalize the beginning of the quote and also very important the last one
we're going to talk about in this particular video is quotation marks do
commas and periods go inside or outside quotation marks commas and periods
always go inside the quotation marks in American English dashes colons and
semicolons almost always go outside the quotation marks question marks and
exclamation marks sometimes go inside and sometimes stay outside okay so for
example James said comma and then the quote I really hate meetings that run
late you'll note that the period is inside the quotation marks now in
British English it's the other way around but for most of these
transcription companies they want you to follow American English guidelines and
so that would mean you would put the period or the comma inside the quotation
and the quotation is at the end and then you would have a space and then you
would start the next letter capital letter of your next sentence so
quotations and capitalization if you're quoting a complete sentence you should
start the quote with a capital letter even if the quote is placed in the
middle of a sentence so the actual saying she read was time
heals all wounds because this is a complete sentence you would start it
with a capital letter even though it's in the middle of or near the end of this
sentence if you're quoting a phrase or a part of a sentence
don't start the quote with a capital letter so for example she called them
boring rude and cruel and she stormed out of the room so boring rude and cruel
is not a complete sentence it's just three adjectives so you would have this
in lowercase not capitalized okay and you would can take quote put
the quotes around it and because that is what she's saying and then you would
continue the rest of the sentence does that make sense
I hope so okay so now we're gonna do a little test based on all the stuff that
we've just gone through and see if how much you know we're gonna fix these
statements and write your answers in the comments below my video to see if you're
right so number one it's going to be a beautiful day tomorrow too my dog is
playing with its toy it's so cute three let's go to the park over there it
looks really nice four have you seen their car they forgot where they parked
five he loved eating pizza with pepperoni six she go shopping every
Tuesday 7 I know want to go to her party I not like her 8 how you make soup I
don't know how 9 my birthday is in January I'm going to celebrate with a
trip to Paris in France and 10 my best friend is Christian but I am Catholic
okay so if you pause this video and you want to answer in the comments that's
great if or even just answer a couple of them if you have time so that is all for
this first part of my video this is more tutorial for people who are not native
English speakers and maybe people who have a lower level of English because if
you have a really decent level of English you should know all of this
stuff maybe there's a few things you might get confused but most of this
stuff you should know so again if you want me to do two more very detailed
videos on capitalization and punctuation I would love to do that for you guys but
I don't want to fill this channel up because it's a money-making channel I
don't want to fill it up with English teaching videos so I'm asking you to go
ahead and like my new channel subscribe to my new channel and then once I
receive 200 subscribers there I will post my next video on capitalization or
punctuation one of the two so I'm hoping that these writing mistakes will help
you when your next transcription exam there's lots of things that you need to
know lots of Homa phones and all sorts of other things that can be really
difficult English is not the easiest language to learn
but that's why I wanted to give you this video to show you what I see a lot of
mistakes that a lot of the people who comment on my videos make small little
errors and I thought this might be able to help you when you're doing your next
exam to keep these things in mind especially with how to capitalize
letters and also with the quotation marks and then other common words that
are misspelled so subscribe to my channel to this channel if you want to
learn more about how to make money online
subscribe to my English teaching channel if you want more videos I want to do
beginner videos and also advanced the videos on learning English when I have
time to do them for you guys so thank you once again for watching my video and
I will see you next time