Name That Grammatical Error Quiz

Erroneous Sentence	Grammatical Error	Explanation
I was hungry and tired, I ate quickly and went to bed.
Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds; to seek out new life and new civilizations; to boldly go where no man has gone before.
As the largest reptiles ever to have lived, small mammals could not compete with the dinosaurs.
The lab is a dangerous place, you should wear a lab coat.		This should be two separate sentences.
These animals could be harmed by various things. Pollution, for example.
The recipes is good for beginning chefs.
Everybody must bring their own lunch.

Erroneous Sentence	Grammatical Error	Explanation
Swimming is done by me.		Corrected: I swim.
I did good in this course.		Corrected: I did well in this course.
Phil doesn't not like mashed carrots.		Phil must like mashed carrots.
I have ask the manager for a reference.
The group made it's decision.
She worked as the assistant to mayor Hanolovi.

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Name That Grammatical Error Quiz

by kubilus1

Created Sep 26, 2009 in Language
Game Plays 400

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	dcdaria:	Sep 28th, 2009 at 01:12 GMT		2 points
	You should also accept "fragment" for "incomplete sentence".

	jdfulp:	Oct 1st, 2009 at 19:05 GMT		2 points
	ok, this has a lot of potential. Could you get it up to about 15? Seems like others to include double negative, irregular verbs, misspelling, incorrect tense, etc. Also, some alts for things like dangling participle, like dangling element, dangling infinitive, and so on. But fun quiz!

	rhebus:	Oct 4th, 2009 at 19:52 GMT		10 points
	passive voice is not a grammatical error.

	MarkhamNR:	Oct 5th, 2009 at 21:55 GMT		4 points
	And "swimming is something I do" is not the passive voice anyway. :)

	kubilus1:	Oct 7th, 2009 at 01:46 GMT		-3 points
	Markham, the sentence is in passive voices since the subject is not mentioned until after the action occurs. Rhebus, technically you are correct. Jdfulp, all good suggestions!

	Tahnan:	Oct 9th, 2009 at 04:28 GMT		3 points
	Kubilus, that's entirely wrong. The subject of the sentence is "swimming", and the subject of swimming isn't even "I". There's quite simply nothing passive about the sentence. There's also nothing wrong with "everybody...their"; "their" is a singular pronoun for someone of indeterminate gender, and has been for centuries. Moreover, the so-called "double negative" there is actually perfectly grammatical: "Phil doesn't not like mashed carrots" doesn't actually mean he must like them; rather, it's usable in a context like "Does Phil like mashed carrots? Well, he doesn't not like them; but they're hardly his favorite". And, let's see, the "run on sentence" is actually just another comma splice. And finally, the names for these things aren't exactly canonical: "adjective for adverb"? "pronoun error"? This wasn't a terrible idea for a quiz...wait, no, sorry, that was a double negative, so I believe I meant, "This wasn't a good idea for a quiz."

	switters:	Oct 9th, 2009 at 15:52 GMT		4 points
	Thank you, Tahnan, for showing an above average understanding of grammar and what constitutes a grammatical error. Mislabeling constructions as passive (not to mention reproving use of the passive voice as though it were an error) is an epidemic problem in our education system. An interesting discussion on the death, or rather, the reassignment of the passive voice in modern English is found (now that's a passive) here: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1227

	spongebob:	Oct 10th, 2009 at 17:58 GMT		1 point
	The second one also ends in a preposition.

	TimeAndTide:	Oct 10th, 2009 at 20:08 GMT		4 points
	I was about to tick off a bunch of problems with this quiz, but Tahnan captured most of them. A few other comments: (a) A comma splice is just a particular kind of run-on sentence. (b) "As the largest reptiles ever to have lived" is not a participial clause, so it can't be a "dangling participle". Actually, it is not even dangling, since the noun it modifies is in the sentence. Technically, then, it is a "misplaced modifier". It could be patched up just by moving the clause to the end of the sentence: "Small mammals could not compete with the dinosaurs, the largest reptiles ever to have lived." An example of sentence with a dangling participle: "Raining cats and dogs, I sloshed through deep puddles on my way to school." (c) English usage experts have long since discarded the strict injunction against split infinitives. Avoid it if it doesn't make the sentence sound awkward, but split away if the situation calls for it. Same goes for ending a sentence with a preposition or starting a sentence with a conjunction. (d) Just as "Phil doesn't not like mashed carrots," has a logical interpretation (as Tahnan pointed out), so too does "I did good in this course." Trust me, if you're a teacher who took under-prepared students and turned them into well-educated young men and women, you can rightly say, "I did good in this course." In this sense, though, "good" is being used as an intangible noun.

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	kubilus1:	Oct 11th, 2009 at 18:23 GMT		1 point
	http://www.yourdictionary.com/grammar-rules/5-most-common.html """ Pronoun errors occur when pronouns do not agree in number with the nouns to which they refer. If the noun is singular, the pronoun must be singular. If the noun is plural, however, the pronoun must be plural as well. For example: * Incorrect: Everybody must bring their own lunch. * Correct: Everybody must bring his or her own lunch. Many people believe that pronoun errors are the result of writers who are trying to avoid the implication of sexist language. Although this is an admirable goal, correct grammar is still important. """

	kubilus1:	Oct 11th, 2009 at 18:27 GMT		0 points
	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_passive_voice """Often double negatives are considered incorrect grammatical usages; however, dialects which use double negatives do so consistently and follow a different set of descriptive linguistic rules. """ Double negatives may sometimes be considered okay, but at least according to Wikipedia they wouldn't be "actually perfectly grammatical."

	kubilus1:	Oct 11th, 2009 at 18:51 GMT		1 point
	BTW, Virtually all the examples are from the list of references.

	szporkel:	Oct 19th, 2009 at 20:36 GMT		4 points
	I knew what you were going for most of the time, but if I couldn't remember the exact name, descriptions or keywords don't work, which was frustrating. For example, for "Capitalization error," something like "incorrect capitalization" doesn't work. Same thing with Verb tense error- it could also just be an missing infinitive. And throwing my 2 cents in on the passive voice one... that's not passive voice. A passive sentence for that one would be "Swimming is done by me." Word order isn't what matters, it's the subject or agent of the sentence that makes a sentence passive. The agent is containing in a (generally non-obligatory) prepositional clause.

	TimeAndTide:	Oct 21st, 2009 at 03:27 GMT		4 points
	I'm sorry, kubilus1, but the reference you cited on active vs. passive voice is just wrong. In the sentence, "Swimming is something I do," the gerund "swimming" is the subject, the word "is" is the verb, and the clause "something I do" is the predicate nominative completing the copulative verb "is". That sentence, although admittedly awkward and stylistically poor, is in the active voice. szporkel is correct that the passive-voice version of, "I swim," would be, "Swimming is done by me."

	kubilus1:	Oct 22nd, 2009 at 17:08 GMT		-1 points
	I agree that this test may not be the most conducive to the sprocle format. It kind of begs to be multiple choice, but it is kind of an experiment I made on a whim. I actually have quite long lists of alternatives, but there are a lot of ways to state the same thing. Originally I was hoping to have a list of shorthand for the errors I was looking for and to do an in-order test. At the moment, this doesn't seem possible with user generated quizzes. Also, I respectfully concede and have updated the 'passive voice' sentence. Thanks for the constructive criticism.

	mathteacher:	Jun 11th, 2010 at 12:29 GMT		2 points
	On many of the clues, I knew how to correct the statement, but did not know how to word the answer to match your wording.