Concord Mistakes

People who want to do an English check of their assignments would find it better to ask someone else to do the proofreading.

When you do the copy-editing or proofreading yourself, you may not notice certain types of errors.

One such relates to what is often called a concord mistake. A concord mistake is said to be committed when you add a wrong verb form to a noun or pronoun.

  • The number of people who visit the ancient church in this city are gradually reducing

The subject (number) is singular and the verb which has to with it should be the singular “is”.

  • After the arrival of the new manager, though the number of employees has increased, the industrial relation has decreased.

Proofreading makes you change “decreased” to “worsened”.

Another area which your proofreading has to focus on pertains to homophones - words which sound the same but have different meanings and spellings.
E.g., Hear/here, loss/laws, their/there, tyre/tire

  • It is there that they bought their cars. (Correct)
  • It is their that they bought there cars. ( Wrong)
  • It is their that they bought their cars. (Wrong)
  • It is there that they bought there cars. (Wrong)

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