NEIL W. TENNANT

tennant.9@osu.edu

If you email me, please use the header PHIL 101: [YOURNAME].

---

Professor
Department of Philosophy

---

Grammatical errors that would make the writer appear to be illiterate

The unwanted apostrophe. Consider the grammatically correct narrative "The dog has eaten its food; so it's a happy dog." Please note that the third-person singular possessive pronoun "its" DOES NOT HAVE AN APOSTROPHE. The occurrence of "it's" after the semi-colon, however, DOES have an apostrophe. This is because it is a contraction of the two words "it is". An irksome case of the unwanted apostrophe can be found, in neon lights, outside a diner on the south-east corner of Grandview Avenue and Dublin Road: "Home Cookin' At It's Best". The first apostrophe correctly indicates the colloquial pronunciation, the proud lack of any social pretension; the second apostrophe, however, has "... and we are uneducated" as its unintended sub-text.

The missing main verb. As you no doubt know, every complete sentence needs a main verb. It is amazing how many people forget this when they start writing.