#60 Our favourite mistakes: Punctuation

▶️ Which one is correct?
a) Afandi said I have a donkey.
b) Afandi said “I have a donkey”.
c) Afandi said „I have a donkey”.

✅ The answer is b):
Afandi said “I have a donkey”.

❓Why?

❗️ Speech marks (also called “quotation marks”) are necessary in this case. Many people are lazy with this.

❗️ Without speech marks “I” refers to the person who wrote the sentence, not Afandi.

❗️ In English, speech marks are generally on the top, never at the bottom.

👉@afandi_english👈 #mistakes #writing

#64 Our favourite mistakes: Writing

▶️ Which ones are correct?
a) There are many countries in Europe, for example France, Germany and Italy.
b) There are many countries in Europe, for ex France, Germany and Italy.
c) There are many countries in Europe, ex France, Germany and Italy.
d) There are many countries in Europe, e.g. France, Germany and Italy.
e) There are many countries in Europe. F. ex. France, Germany and Italy.

✅ The answer is a) and d)

❓Why?

❗️ For ex is not a recognised abbreviation. It could be misunderstood as foreign exchange. Just ex means former, or as a noun former partner (“I haven’t seen my ex since we got divorced”).

❗️ Use e.g. instead. It comes from Latin, stands for exempli gratia and is perfect for use in writing. But not in speaking.

👉@afandi_english👈 #mistakes #writing

#68 Our favourite mistakes: Speaking & Writing

▶️ Please translate the following sentence:
Mening ismim Abdullayev Abdullo.

❌ Perhaps you think it is:
My name is Abdullayev Abdullo.

✅ Well, it should be:
My name is Abdullo Abdullayev.

❓Why?

❗️ In English first names come first and last names come last. Simple as that. Saying your first name first doesn’t mean you’re a celebrity like “Yulduz Usmonova” (rather than “Usmonova Yulduz”).

❗️ Think of this difference as a cultural difference. Western culture is more individualistic and therefore puts the individual person’s name first. Non-western cultures are more collectivist and emphasize who the person belongs to.

👉@afandi_english👈 #mistakes #writing

#72 Our favourite mistakes: Writing

▶️ What’s wrong here in these sentences?
• We had not written
• It will be writing
• I shall not have written
• I am taken

❌ Perhaps you think about grammar now. Please don’t. Please also don’t think about what these sentences might mean (it’s complete nonsense without context).

❗️ The problem is … missing full stops (British English =dot to finish a sentence; Americans say “period”)! Every sentence needs one at the end, unless you’re chatting with someone on Telegram. The same goes for questions. Every question needs a question mark!

👉@afandi_english👈 #mistakes #writing

#76 Our favourite mistakes: Punctuation

▶️ What’s wrong here in this non-language paragraph?

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet , consectetur elit,sed do eiusmod- tempor ut aliqua .Ut enim “ ad minim ”veniam ;quis exercitation –ullamco nisi ut consequat.Duis dolor(reprehenderit )in eu pariatur .

❗️ The problem is spacing around punctuation marks. Mistakes with spacing make your text look messy and unprofessional!
• No space before and a space behind
[.] full stop
[,] comma
[:] colon
[;] semicolon
[?] question mark
[!] exclamation mark
[)] closing bracket
[”] closing speech marks
• A space before and no space behind
[(] opening bracket
[“] opening speech marks
• Spaces to both sides
[–] dash
• No spaces at all
[-] hyphen (connecting two words)

▶️ Now look at the correct version:
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur elit, sed do eiusmod-tempor ut aliqua. Ut enim “ad minim” veniam; quis exercitation – ullamco nisi ut consequat. Duis dolor (reprehenderit) in eu pariatur.

👉@afandi_english👈 #mistakes #writing

#84 Our favourite mistakes: Writing

▶️ Please take a look at the following placeholder text (=meaningless text, esp. for design):

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat.

Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

❓What’s the problem?

❗️ The two paragraphs are marked by both indents (=space at the beginning of a line) and line breaks (=empty line). Choose one style only!

❗️ Indents are used in books and magazines for long, printed texts. They help us save paper. Online texts usually have line breaks. We can say that indents are a little bit old-fashioned nowadays.

👉@afandi_english👈 #mistakes #writing

#96 Our favourite mistakes: Spelling

▶️ Look at these two sentences:
I wonder If it rains tomorrow.
I think It is very interesting.

❓ What’s wrong here?

❗️ Some students have the strange habit of writing the two words if and it with capital letters. There’s no reason to do that!

👉@afandi_english👈 #mistakes #writing

#100 Our favourite mistakes: Review

▶️ Time to look back at a big bunch of favourite mistakes before we go on!

To help you navigate between the different posts, Afandi English uses *hashtags*.

❓You’re interested in any kind of typical mistakes of Uzbek English learners?
❗️Browse #mistakes (99 posts).

❓Vocabulary is what worries you?
❗️Follow #vocabulary (35 posts).

❓You want to work on your grammar?
❗️Check out #grammar (33 posts).

❓Your pronunciation needs polishing?
❗️Go for #pronunciation (30 posts).

❗️Besides, there’s also #writing (11 posts) for issues in spelling, punctuation and spacing.

👉@afandi_english👈 #mistakes

#122 Our favourite mistakes: Handwriting

▶️ What’s strange here?
Miкe tooк the кnife to кill the monкey.

❓ What’s wrong?

❗️ The small k’s are taken from the Cyrillic alphabet. Latin alphabet k’s have a long neck. Some students use the wrong shape in handwriting, i.e. writing the small Latin k without the long neck that it should have.

👉@afandi_english👈 #mistakes #writing

#125 Our favourite mistakes: Writing

▶️ Look at this sentence:
People today face many problems, such as stress, loneliness, conflicts with others and etc.

❓ What’s wrong here?

❗️ There is no combination and etc. because etc. means et cetera and et already means and in Latin.

❗️ You have two options – either just etc. or and so on. Choose one only.

👉@afandi_english👈 #mistakes #writing

#130 Our favourite mistakes: Writing

▶️ Please translate the following items:
Andijon davlat universiteti
Oksford universiteti nashriyoti
Jahon savdo tashkiloti

❌ Perhaps you think it is:
Andijan state university
Oxford university press
World trade organisation

✅ Well, it should be:
Andijan State University
Oxford University Press
World Trade Organisation

❓Why?

❗️ Proper nouns in English are capitalised. If they consist of several words then all of the words are capitalised, not just the first word (unlike in Uzbek).

👉@afandi_english👈 #mistakes #writing

#133 Our favourite mistakes: Writing

▶️ Look at this sentence:
If I get a chance to travel I want to go to America, Europe, Japan, Australia.

❓ What’s wrong here?

❗️ In a list of items (enumeration) there should be ‘and’ before the last item, not a comma. It should be America, Europe, Japan and Australia.

❗️ The only exception to that is newspaper headlines where you can find things like ‘Agreement signed between Russia, Ukraine’.

👉@afandi_english👈 #mistakes #writing

#144 Our favourite mistakes: Writing

▶️ Look at the writing above. 👆

❓What’s wrong here?
❗️ The spaces between the words are much too large. When typing you also can’t use more than one space between words.

❓Why?
❗️ This habit comes from writing ‘konspekt’ in which you have to fill as many pages as possible with as little text as possible, to trick the teacher into thinking that you have done a lot of work. Please don’t do it in essay writing, it’s dishonest and wasteful.

👉@afandi_english👈 #mistakes #writing

#145 Our favourite mistakes: Writing

▶️ Look at the writing above. 👆

❓What’s wrong here?
❗️ The student is using brackets (=these things 👉(...)👈) for correction.

❓Why?
❗️ The purpose of using brackets for correction is to maintain an orderly look of the text (“chiroylism”). Crossing out wrong words would look messy. Unfortunately, brackets do not have this function in English. They are used for giving extra information, not marking wrong words.

❓What to do instead?
❗️ Simple. Just cross it out! 😏

👉@afandi_english👈 #mistakes #writing

#146 Our favourite mistakes: Writing

▶️ Look at the following sentences:
I think, this is a good idea.
Because, there are many problems.
But, I disagree with this statement.
So, I this is the best solution.

❓What’s wrong here?
❗️ There should not be any commas.

❓Why?
❗️ The problem is overgeneralisation. You have seen sentence starters like these:
- However, …
- Firstly, …
- On the other hand, …
- Moreover, ...

These all have commas, but that doesn’t mean everything must have commas.

👉@afandi_english👈 #mistakes #writing

▶️ Afandi English is over 4 years old now and there’s a ton of stuff you’ve missed. Here are some hashtags for posts about language learning:

#correct
Check if you can spot some common mistakes.

#grammar
Brush up your grammar.

#ielts
Get the DOs and DON’Ts of preparing for IELTS.

#learn2learn
Take advice on how to learn a foreign language.

#mistakes
The biggest collection of Uzbek learners’ typical mistakes in English – at your fingertips.

#oddmanout
See if you can find the mistake.

#pronunciation
Fix your pronunciation problems, one at a time.

#self_study
Sit down and help yourself. Interesting videos plus script plus activities.

#tongue_twisters
Work on your pronunciation and fluency in one go.

#uni_vocab
Understand university-related vocabulary.

#vocabulary
Learn about lexical problems and pick the right words next time.

#world_englishes
Realise that English is a world language and prepare for the worst. Or the best?

#writing
Say goodbye to your most common and unnecessary writing mistakes.

Odd Man Out #3

▶️ There are some spelling mistakes that are really popular among students. Look at the words below and find the one that is spelled correctly!

👉@afandi_english👈 #mistakes #oddmanout #writing

Our favourite mistakes #148: Writing

▶️ Please translate the following sentence:

Toshkent aholisi 3,1 million, Andijonniki 500.000.

❌ Perhaps you think it is:
The population of Tashkent is 3,1 million, that of Andijan 500.000.

✅ Well, it should be:
The population of Tashkent is 3.1 million, that of Andijan 500,000.

❓What’s wrong here?
❗️ Just as you say “three point one” – what you write is a dot, NOT a comma. Conversely, large numbers are separated by commas in English, NOT by dots.

💡More examples:
I scored ❌ 7,5 ✅ 7.5 in IELTS.
I paid ❌ 100.000 ✅ 100,000 soum for this.
It took me ❌ 1,5 ✅ 1.5 hours to get home.

👉@afandi_english👈 #mistakes #writing

Our favourite mistakes #149: Writing

▶️ Look at this piece of wannabe academic writing:

There is given an example in the article.

❓What’s wrong here?
❗️You can add “given” but do it after the object, i.e. There is an example given in the article.

👉@afandi_english👈 #mistakes #writing

Our favourite mistakes #150: Writing

▶️ Look at these sentences:

1️⃣ It should be noted that, this is very important.
2️⃣ The reason is that, people have different opinions.
3️⃣ It is a very big problem so that, we must solve it.

❓What’s wrong?
❗️There’s no reason why you should use a comma here. Please don’t.

👉@afandi_english👈 #mistakes #writing