Common Spelling and Grammatical Errors on the Internet

The following is simply a collection of the most obvious and common language errors I have noticed lately on the internet. Their appearance here indicates a consistent pattern and not just random typing errors ("typos") or unfamiliarity with the language (foreign and new speakers). [Note: I normally drop periods from the ends of entries in tables, for purely aesthetic reasons.]

Type	Penetration	Incorrect Form	Correct Form	Explanation	Mnemonic*

Spelling	Common	definately	definitely		Finite or infinite, not finate or infinate
Spelling	Common	your (for "you are")	you're	Two words are run together: you are becomes you're
Spelling	Common	its (for "it is")	it's	Two words are run together: it is becomes it's
Spelling	Common	it's (that which belongs to it)	its		Same as most other possessive pronouns: his, hers, ours, theirs (exception: one's)
Spelling	Common	to (more than needed, or "also")	too		o+o
Spelling	Occasional	now (to have knowledge of)	know		You don't always know it now
Spelling	Occasional	seperate	separate		The 2 e's are separated by 2 a's: e-a-a-e
Spelling	Occasional	were (the location of something)	where		Note the pattern: Where? Here and there.
Spelling	Sadly common	their (in that place)	there		Answers the question, "Where?" as does *here*
Spelling	Sadly common	there, their (for "they are")	they're	Contraction of "they are"	It is not a federal crime to spell out any of these contractions if you are not sure of the spelling! In fact, in most serious writing, as in published books, it is virtually mandatory
Spelling	Sadly common	there (belonging to them)	their		Think of the possessions of the heir

Grammatical	Pandemic	There's ("there is") apples† somewhere	There are apples somewhere		Rearrange: Does "Apples is there" really sound right to you?
Grammatical	Common	Prof. Smith was the former dean	Prof. Smith is the former dean	Unless you are talking about a time prior to the present but after the time in the past when the condition existed, the state of being "former" exists now, not then	This type of temporal grammar is about logic. Think about what existed when
Grammatical	Comments on news sites	She gave it to the man whom was eating the apple. [I kid you not! These appear to be the same folks who connect two sentences with the word which and make plurals by adding 's]^#	She gave it to whom? She gave it to the man who was eating the apple	Whom is the object of the verb and only the object of the verb. As with him and them, it is not used just because the pronoun follows the verb. In this case it is the subject of a dependent clause	The situation is roughly analogous to the misuse of him in the following sentence: "My uncle studied architecture when him was in college." Sound a little strange? That's because architecture is the object of the verb, not he
Grammatical	More common in spoken English, but sometimes written	Red Mountain is in Blue County, which the sunsets are fantastic.	Red Mountain is in Blue County. The sunsets are fantastic. [OR] Red Mountain is in Blue County, in which the sunsets are fantastic.	Which cannot be used to staple together two otherwise separate sentences. Neither is it correct to drop a preceding preposition, which amounts to the same thing	Which, in this case, is a pronoun. When used alone, it replaces Blue County and would normally be the subject of a subsidiary clause, as in, "Red Mountain is in Blue County, which was established during the Green Period."

Punctuation	Pandemic	Hyphen - used to replace a colon (:) or semicolon (;) in less than rigorously formal discourse	M-dash―named after its size in metal type	Hyphens (-) are used to break compound words and to run-on words at the ends of lines, not to break up sentences in the manner of colons and semicolons. If your HTML program doesn't have a list of symbols, the code for the M-dash (―) is —. If you don't have access to the underlying HTML, a double hyphen (--) may be used‡	Hyphens (-) are small; they break up small units like words. M-dashes (―) are large; they break up large units like clauses and sentences

*Memory device. †Apples stands for any plural noun. ‡And no, there is not necessarily a space on either side of the M-dash, though this does occur occasionally, especially in England. The fact is that once upon a time ("back in the day") spaces were used before colons, semicolons, and question marks. See, for example, the Anacalypsis of Godfrey Higgins, published in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Even then, when commas sometimes preceded M-dashes, there were never spaces surrounding the M-dashes, which Higgins uses in abundance. ^#The exception to this is when the plural is of a single letter, as in, "A's are better than B's."