What’s one of the easiest ways to lose your audience’s respect?
Grammar mistakes.
Correct grammar is the absolute bare minimum your audience expects from a professional brand — there is nothing more jarring than a piece of copy that is rudely interrupted by a stray apostrophe or a rogue comma.
We’ve compiled a list of three of the most common mistakes to help you steer clear of committing any serious grammatical sins.
“Have” vs “Of”
One of the most FREQUENT mistakes we see on an everyday basis, both in speech and in writing, can be seen in the following:
“Truffle must of been the first agency ever to work with them…”
“We really should of jumped on that trend…”
“They would of been the best brand ever…”
Notice the issue?
If you take the modal verb — i.e. must, should, would — out of these sentences, they should still make sense. If they don’t (as is the case with the above), you’ve probably done something wrong.
So… to correct these sentences, replace the “of” with “have”, and they’ll make sense with or without the modal verbs. Alternatively, you can contract the words together to make the following:
“Truffle must’ve been the first agency ever to work with them…”
“We really should’ve jumped on that trend…”
“They would’ve been the best brand ever…”
“Is” vs “Are”
“Here” and “there” are often used in the place of pronouns or nouns in sentences like the following:
“Here is the best way to optimise your social media presence.”
The above sentence is fine. The issue comes when people start following “here is” or “there is” with plural nouns, when they should be using “here are” or “there are”.
Here ARE (see what we did there?) some examples of what you should and shouldn’t be doing in this situation:
“There’s two options for your next piece of content.” ❌
“There are two options for your next piece of content.” ✅
“Here’s three ways you can maximise your reach.” ❌
“Here are three ways you can maximise your reach.” ✅
“There is three months to go until the end of the campaign.” ❌
“There are three months to go until the end of the campaign.” ✅
“I” vs “Me”
This is one we’ve all undoubtedly been confused about at one time or another.
Should you be writing “Truffle and me” or “Truffle and I”?
The good news is that both are technically correct.
The bad news is that their correctness depends on the nature of the sentence.
The word “I” is a subject pronoun. Therefore, if the speaker is the subject of the sentence — i.e. the person or thing doing the verb — “Truffle and I” will most likely be correct.
For example:
“Truffle and I go together like peanut butter and jelly.”
The word “me” is an object pronoun. Therefore, if the speaker is the object of the sentence — i.e. the person or thing on the receiving end of the verb — “Truffle and me” will most likely be correct.
For example:
“The award was won by Truffle and me.”
It’s okay if you’re still a little confused. Trust us — you’re not alone. Feel free to refer back to this blog as a little cheat sheet for whenever you need it. It’s bound to stick in your head after a while.
What common mistakes have we missed? Head over to our Instagram page @trufflesocial and pop us a message to let us know!
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