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Grammar Police: 8 Common Mistakes You Need to Stop Making Now

By Tushar Kumar

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Homophones are words that sound the same but have different meanings and spellings, such as "their" (possessive), "there" (location), and "they're" (contraction for "they are"). In word games like Scrabble, using the wrong homophone can affect your score and strategy. Understanding these can also help solve clues in crossword puzzles that play on word sounds.

1 - Homophones Havoc

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Apostrophes are often misplaced in possessives and contractions, leading to common errors. In word puzzles, especially those requiring exact spelling, knowing where to place apostrophes can be the difference between winning and losing points.

2 - Apostrophe Catastrophes

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A comma splice occurs when two independent clauses are joined by a comma without a coordinating conjunction. Recognizing comma splices helps in sentence-based puzzles and games where you need to structure sentences correctly to advance or score.

3 - Comma Splice Slice

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Capitalization errors, especially with proper nouns, can lead to misunderstandings in written content. In cryptic crosswords, proper capitalization can serve as a clue to the answer, and not capitalizing correctly can mislead players.

4 - Capitalization Clues

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Maintaining consistent verb tenses in a sentence ensures clarity and readability. Word games that involve creating or completing stories require careful attention to tense to maintain coherence in the narrative.

5 - Tense Tangles

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Ensuring subjects and verbs agree in number and person is fundamental for clear communication. Games that involve sentence construction will penalize for subject-verb disagreement, which can also confuse players or solvers.

6 - Verb Agreement Games

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Using pronouns accurately is crucial to ensure they clearly refer back to the correct noun. In descriptive or narrative word games, precise pronoun use helps maintain clarity in storytelling and instruction comprehension.

7 - Pronoun Precision

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Prepositions link nouns, pronouns, or phrases to other words in a sentence and often denote time, place, or direction. Misusing prepositions can lead to incorrect interpretations of game clues, especially in games where precise location, time, or movement is key to solving puzzles.

8 - Preposition Proposition

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