Bought and brought

Another source of confusion for many writers. Here's the lowdown: bought is the past participle of the verb to buy. Brought is the past participle of the verb to bring.

Consider this sentence: Jamie brought some shoes from the shop. Some authors may use sentence this in the mistaken belief that they are describing Jamie buying shoes. Actually, the sentence tells us that Jamie was bringing shoes, not buying.

Remember, bring and buy leads to brought and bought.

Whilst or while? Amongst or among?

There's no grammatical difference; it's simply a matter of choice. Whilst and amongst are fancy, formal styling; while and among are simple, plain English. So if you want to strike a friendly, modern tone, drop the st.

Company - it or they?

Confusion over this is something I come across frequently. Usually, a company (e.g. Perfectly Write) is singular (see how I used is there and not are?). So 'Perfectly Write is a company providing proofreading services and is based in Kent' is correct; 'Perfectly Write' are a company that also offer copy-editing services and are pretty good at copywriting too' is wrong (well, the grammar is, hopefully the sense is not!).

Often, I look at material in which the company switches from singular to plural pretty frequently and the whole document smacks of inconsistency. Like this: Perfectly Write offer a range of services to publishers. They provide proofreading and copy-editing, and the company has experience in publishing. Perfectly Write are dedicated to ensuring consistency in text - its ethos is to make things 'perfectly write'. I would correct this to: Perfectly Write offers a range of services to publishers. It provides proofreading and copy-editing, and the company has experience in publishing. Perfectly Write is dedicated to ensuring consistency in text - its ethos is to make things 'perfectly write'.

Common mistakes in writing

They rear their ugly heads daily as I proofread and edit, worming their way into document after document as if sticking a tongue out at me goading, Catch me if you can. And I do catch them, day after day - mistakes I find so often they jump out at me from the page as if 3D.

Here's my top five:

1. Comma splices: It's amazing how many writers join two sentences together with a comma, and rather alarming how prevalent this has become in published books (take a look at this weekend's HP finale).
2. Missing/incorrect apostrophes: Did you notice the apostrophe in weekend's above? Many seem to feel the apostrophe is either optional, or something to plonk anywhere in the vicinity of the word in question.
3. Random capitals: I spend an impressive amount of my day decapitalising words.
4. Inconsistent styling: It's thirteen miles to London, but three lines later it's 15 days until Christmas.
5. Spellchecked nonsense: Just because that word is spelled correctly, doesn't mean it's the right word. This morning I found the following while proofreading a serious article on a church: The chap is a plaice for queer time (The chapel is a place for quiet time).