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I think part of being a good writer is understanding your faults.  And what better way to correct my faults than to yell them to the world?  So without further ado, my top five writing mistakes.

1.  It’s vs. Its

While I know the difference between the two, however when writing I’ll often times mess it up somehow.  When I go back and proof my work, it doesn’t always get caught either.  I also find that this is one of the most common mistakes missed by editors.

2.  One comma too many

I have a tendency to write long and drawn out sentences, often times I’m not content to write in the short bursts that have become common place in modern writing.  That’s just part of my writing style, and while I oftentimes find myself trying to change my style in this regards, when I do write the longer sentences, I tend to use too, many, commas.

3.  Forgetting to edit

I’ll write a sentence like “The Vikings are one of the best teams in the league.”  Then I’ll edit it to say “The Vikings are the best team in the league.”  But, I’ll forget to take off the “s” at the end of “teams,” so my sentence ends up saying “The Vikings are the best teams in the league.”  More fail.

4.  Not connecting disjointed topics

Say I’m talking about how great the Twins are for couple sentences, and then in my mind I’ll start thinking about other great baseball teams of the past twenty years.  I’ll then just launch right into other great teams of the past, not writing a connecting statement to join up my two thoughts.  This has a tendency to make my writing a little more spotty than I want it to be.  This problem becomes particularly obvious when I’m writing a more conversational piece where I need to be entertaining and present unique and insightful thoughts.

5.  Weather/Whether, Affect/Effect, Week/Weak

Those are the top three groups of words that I always have to stop and ask myself “I’m using the correct version, right?”  I’ve gotten better at these mistakes, but I still make them often enough.  When I have weeks like this last one where I write over 10,000 words, I’ll inevitably screw up and let these mistakes negatively affect one of my articles or writings, whether I pay close attention or not.

So what can we all learn from this?  Having another set of eyes on your writing, hopefully by a professional editor, is an awesome thing.