Boldface numbers refer to sections of the handbook.

abbrabbreviation40

adjmisuse of adjective26

addadd needed word10

advmisuse of adverb26

agragreement21, 22

apprinappropriate language17

artarticle (a, an, the)29

awkawkward

capcapital letter45

casepronoun case24, 25

clichécliché18e

cohcoherence3d

coordcoordination14

cscomma splice20

devinadequate development3b

dmdangling modifier12e

-ed-ed ending27d

emphemphasis14

ESLEnglish as a second language, multilingual28–31

exactinexact language18

fragsentence fragment19

fsfused sentence20

gl/ussee glossary of usage

hyphhyphen44

idiomidioms18d

incincomplete construction10

irregirregular verb27a

italitalics42

jargjargon17a

lclowercase45

mixmixed construction11

mmmisplaced modifier12a–d

moodmood of verb27g

nonstnonstandard usage17d, 27

numuse of numbers41

omomitted word10, 29, 30a–b

ppunctuation

comma32

no ,no comma33

;semicolon34

:colon35

apostrophe36

“ ”quotation marks37

. ?period, question mark38a–b

!exclamation point38c

—( )dash, parentheses39a–b

[ ] . . .brackets, ellipsis mark39c–d

/slash39e

new paragraph3e

passineffective passive8

pn agrpronoun agreement22

proofproofreading problem2c

refpronoun reference23

run-onrun-on sentence20

-s-s ending27c, 21

sexistsexist language17f, 22a

shiftdistracting shift13

slslang17d

spmisspelled word43

subsubordination14

sv agrsubject-verb agreement21, 27c

tverb tense27f, 28a

transtransition needed3d

usagesee glossary of usage

vvoice8a, 28b

varlack of variety in sentence structure14, 15

vbverb problem27, 28

wwordy16

//parallelism9

^insert

#insert space

close up space