Are You Making These Common Grammar Mistakes?

Whether you're an old school grammar snob or someone who embraces the evolution of linguistic conventions in the digital age (aka the Internet does not care about traditional grammar), I think we can all agree that the rules of English are tough, and we all make mistakes. But thanks to an infographic from Easy Proofreader, you can now check out the most common mistakes in the English language. And hopefully avoid them accordingly.

Now, I don't consider myself a "grammar Nazi." Language is meant to communicate, not to be pretty and perfect — and sometimes breaking the rules can actually improve communication. Just look at the Internet. The number of ways people have found online to convey tone with nothing but plain text is impressive. There are all kinds of fascinating conventions, like ALL CAPITALS meaning someone shouting, or using "u" instead of "you" to indicate you're being informal or not overly serious, not to mention the many creative uses of punctuation available.

But at the same time, I also come from the "you have to learn the rules before you get to break them" camp. If you're going to break rules, it should be deliberate, and it should mean something. Which means you have to learn what they actually are. Because if someone is mixing up "then" and "than" on purpose for whatever reason, but you don't even understand the difference, you're going to miss out. And if you want to misspell something to, say, embed some sort of meaning about your mental state, but you don't know how to spell properly, what are you supposed to do?

In other words, the old rules of English still matter.

Which brings us back to this infographic. Because shaking up language isn't the same as making mistakes. So how many of these common grammatical oops-es are you guilty of? Look below to find out.

Image: Easy Proofreader