Correct spelling errors and wrong word forms, and distinguish commonly confused words in editing

What this dot point is asking

Spelling and word-form errors are small but costly: they appear in the Editing task and chip away at the language mark across every paper. The skill is twofold: spelling high-frequency words correctly, and choosing the right form of a word (noun, verb, adjective or adverb) and the right one of a confused pair (their/there, its/it's, advice/advise). This dot point covers the traps that catch students most and a proofreading method to catch them.

The answer

High-frequency spelling traps

Some words are misspelled far more often than others, so they repay direct learning. Common traps include double letters ("necessary", "accommodate", "beginning"), the "-ed" ending after a final "y" ("studied", "carried"), irregular plurals ("children", not "childrens"; "women"; "feet"), and silent letters ("knowledge", "rhythm"). You cannot learn every word, but a short personal list of the words you keep getting wrong, reviewed regularly, fixes most of your individual errors.

Confused word pairs (homophones)

Words that sound the same but are spelled and used differently are a favourite of the Editing task:

• their / there / they're - possession / place or "there is" / "they are".
• its / it's - "its" belongs to it; "it's" means "it is" (the apostrophe is only for the contraction).
• your / you're - belonging to you / "you are".
• to / too / two - direction or infinitive / also or excessive / the number.
• advice / advise - the noun / the verb (the "c" noun, the "s" verb).
• affect / effect - usually the verb / usually the noun.

These are not really spelling errors but meaning errors, so the cure is knowing what each word means, then checking which one the sentence needs.

Choosing the right word form

The same root word changes form for its job in the sentence:

• Noun, verb, adjective, adverb: "success" (noun), "succeed" (verb), "successful" (adjective), "successfully" (adverb).
• The most common form error is using an adjective where an adverb is needed: "She sang beautiful" should be "She sang beautifully", because an adverb describes the verb "sang".

Ask what job the word is doing: describing a noun (adjective), describing a verb or how something is done (adverb), naming a thing (noun), or being the action (verb). Then pick the matching form.

A proofreading method

Most spelling and form errors are catchable in a final read if you look for them deliberately. Proofread slowly, ideally reading each sentence almost aloud in your head, because the ear catches "she runs quick" and "their going home" even when the eye glides past. Watch your personal trap words and the confused pairs above. In the last few minutes of any paper, a focused proofread for these errors is one of the highest-value things you can do for the language mark.

Examples in context

Example 1. The its/it's trap in real sentences. Writers reach for an apostrophe whenever they see possession, so they wrongly write "the dog wagged it's tail." But possessive "its" has no apostrophe, exactly like "his" and "hers"; the apostrophe is reserved for the contraction "it's" meaning "it is" or "it has". A quick test settles every case: read the apostrophe version as "it is" and see if it makes sense. "The dog wagged it is tail" is nonsense, so the answer is "its". This one test removes the most common punctuation error in the language.

Example 2. Adverbs describing how something is done. A candidate writes, "He answered the questions confident and quick." Both words are adjectives, but they are describing how he answered (a verb), so they must be adverbs: "He answered the questions confidently and quickly." The "-ly" form is the signal that a word is doing an adverb's job. Spotting that a describing word attached to a verb should usually be an adverb, not an adjective, fixes a whole family of word-form errors that the Editing task likes to set.

Try this

Q1. Correct this sentence: "Your going to love there new house." [2 marks]

• Cue. "Your" should be "You're" (you are) and "there" should be "their" (possession): "You're going to love their new house."

Q2. Give the noun, verb, adjective and adverb forms of "beauty/beautiful". [2 marks]

• Cue. Noun: beauty. Verb: beautify. Adjective: beautiful (describes a noun). Adverb: beautifully (describes a verb, as in "she sang beautifully").

Q3. Explain a quick test for choosing between "its" and "it's". [2 marks]

• Cue. Read the apostrophe version as "it is"; if it makes sense, use "it's", and if not, use the possessive "its". For example "it's raining" works as "it is raining", but "the cat licked its paw" does not work as "it is paw", so it takes "its".