Skidmore College Department of Classics

The ten items below comprise the most common errors in student writing. The pages refer to the appropriate sections in The Skidmore Guide to Writing, which you will find most useful in developing successful writing strategies.

1. Sentence fragments, comma splices (run-ons), p. 20
2. Noun-pronoun agreement, p. 21
3. Semi-colon use, p. 27
4. Possessives, p. 28
5. It's/its, p. 29
6. Who's/whose, p. 29
7. Punctuation with quotations, p. 32
8. Contextualizing and citing quotations, pp. 82-89
9. Vagueness, p. 39
10. Awkwardness, p. 39
11. Poor word choice, p. 12, 14-15, 40
12. Wordiness, pp. 12, 14, 16, 40-41.