A practical guide to fixing the most common errors in writing

We’ve all been there. You hit “publish” on a blog post or send an important email, only to spot a glaring typo moments later. It happens to everyone, from students to seasoned professional writers. While perfection isn't always possible, aiming for error-free writing is a worthy goal. It builds credibility with your audience, ensures your message lands as intended, and just looks more professional.

The problem is bigger than an occasional slip-up. Some estimates suggest that spelling errors in human-typed text can be as high as 10-15% for web queries. That’s a lot of room for confusion. While proofreading will always be a vital final step, what if you could prevent most of those mistakes from happening in the first place? Modern tools are helping writers create polished, well-structured content from the start, saving a ton of time and headaches.

What are common errors in writing?

When people talk about common errors in writing, they're referring to recurring mistakes in grammar, punctuation, style, and word choice that can trip up a reader. They’re the little things that can make your content feel confusing, distracting, or just a bit off.

Of course, language is flexible, and what counts as an "error" can sometimes depend on the context. But some mistakes are so frequent they're almost universally flagged. Nationwide research has even identified the twenty most common errors found in student writing, giving us a data-backed checklist of what to watch out for.

The impact of these errors goes beyond a red squiggly line. They can undermine your authority, make your arguments hard to follow, and dilute the message you’re trying to share.

The top 3 categories for common errors in writing

Most writing mistakes can be sorted into three main buckets: how you build your sentences, how you use punctuation, and the specific words you choose. Let's break them down.

Category 1: Sentence structure mistakes

These are the foundational issues that mess with the flow and logic of your writing. Getting sentence structure right ensures everything else holds together better. Here are the most common culprits, based on guides from places like the UW-Madison Writing Center.

• Sentence Fragments: This is basically an incomplete thought trying to pass as a full sentence. According to research, this is one of the 20 most frequent errors writers make. It leaves your reader hanging.

  • Incorrect: Although the data was compelling.
  • Correct: Although the data was compelling, the team requested a second trial.

• Comma Splices & Fused Sentences: A comma splice happens when you try to jam two complete sentences together with just a comma. A fused sentence (or run-on) does the same thing but with no punctuation at all. Both create a clunky, breathless feel.

  • Incorrect (Comma Splice): The experiment was a success, the results were published immediately.
  • Correct: The experiment was a success; the results were published immediately. (A semicolon works wonders here).

• Faulty Parallelism: When you have a list or a series of items in a sentence, they should all follow the same grammatical pattern. When they don't, it feels unbalanced and can be jarring for the reader.

  • Incorrect: The goals are to increase traffic, generating more leads, and sales growth.
  • Correct: The goals are to increase traffic, generate more leads, and grow sales. (See how all the verbs line up now? Much smoother).

Category 2: Punctuation mistakes

These might seem like tiny details, but getting them wrong can completely change the meaning of a sentence or just make your writing harder to read. Punctuation guides the reader, telling them when to pause, stop, or connect ideas.

Here are a few of the most common punctuation and mechanical slip-ups:

Category 3: Word choice and spelling issues

These can be the sneakiest errors because a standard spellchecker often won't catch them. After all, "desert" is a perfectly spelled word, but it’s not what you want for dessert. Research shows that using the wrong word is actually the number one most common error writers make.

Spelling correction research splits these into two types: non-word errors (typos like "graffe") and real-word errors (using "there" instead of "their"). It's the real-word errors that cause the most trouble.

Here are a few pairs that trip people up all the time:

• Affect vs. Effect: Affect is almost always a verb that means "to influence" (The rain will affect the game). Effect is usually a noun that means "a result" (The rain had a negative effect on the game).
• Fewer vs. Less: Use fewer for things you can count (fewer emails, fewer mistakes). Use less for concepts you can't count (less stress, less confusion).
• Who vs. Whom: Here’s a simple trick. If you can replace the word with "he" or "she," use who. If you can replace it with "him" or "her," use whom. (Who is coming to the party? He is. To whom should I send the invoice? Send it to him.)
• Disinterested vs. Uninterested: Disinterested means you're impartial or have no stake in the outcome (A judge should be disinterested). Uninterested just means you're bored or not paying attention (He was uninterested in the lecture).

It’s always everyone’s emotions and motives on full display. All. The. Time. It’s like no character is ever allowed to act in a way that could confuse another character and therefore have the possibility of being misunderstood by the reader themselves. But people aren't always so transparent or loud with emotions.

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A modern workflow for avoiding common errors in writing

We’ve identified the usual suspects. But knowing what the errors are is only half the battle. The real advantage comes from changing your workflow to prevent them from happening in the first place. Instead of an endless cycle of writing a messy draft and then spending hours fixing it, you can lean on AI to create a much better starting point.

Start with a draft that avoids common errors

Think of AI not just as a proofreader, but as a proactive writing partner. Instead of staring at a blank page and worrying about sentence fragments, you can generate a clean, logically structured draft from the get-go.

This is what the eesel AI blog writer is designed for. You give it a single keyword or topic, and it builds a complete, publish-ready post that's engineered to avoid many of these common pitfalls from the start. It generates a full article with a proper introduction, logical headings, and a solid conclusion. This built-in structure helps prevent foundational issues like sentence fragments and run-on sentences.

The model is also refined to avoid robotic, repetitive phrasing. It can even learn from your website to match your brand voice, helping you with making AI content sound human right away. Because the AI understands the topic, it produces clearer sentences and reduces the risk of vague statements or unclear pronoun references. It can even pull in relevant social proof from Reddit quotes, adding credibility automatically.

The importance of a human editor

AI is a powerful assistant, but the final polish and expert insight have to come from you. A human-in-the-loop workflow is essential, not just for quality, but also for aligning with guidelines like Google's E-E-A-T, which values human expertise and experience.

My two cents is yes. I use Active Inspiration (A.I.) software to 'break me out' of the blank page freeze. The issue is when the content is 70% AI or more. AI should really be used as an Assistive Interface for writing great content, not producing mechanical bastardized word slop by running and rerunning paragraphs through GPT-3.

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For a more visual breakdown of these mistakes, watching examples can be incredibly helpful. The video below offers a great overview of some of the most frequent writing errors and, more importantly, how to fix them.

The video below offers a great overview of some of the most frequent writing errors and, more importantly, how to fix them.

Your path to avoiding common errors in writing

Understanding the most common errors in writing is the first step toward fixing them. But the real key to long-term improvement is adopting a smarter workflow.

The modern approach to content creation isn't an endless cycle of writing, fixing, and rewriting. It's about generating a high-quality, well-structured draft with an AI partner like eesel AI. This lets you focus your valuable time on refining the message, adding your unique insights, and making sure the content truly connects with your audience.

Ultimately, clear and polished blog writing builds trust. When your content is easy to read and free of distracting errors, you’re not just sharing information—you’re building a relationship with your reader.

Ready to transform your writing process? Generate your first complete, publish-ready blog post and see how a better starting point makes all the difference. Try eesel AI for free.