Polishing Your Manuscript with Good Grammar

For the next few blogs, I want to share some common grammar errors that make your writing not as professional as it could be. With each blog, I also plan to compare a few homonyms whose misuse also detracts from your writing.

My pet grammar peeve is the confusion of the objective and the nominative cases.

For example, The editor gave Joan and I some tips on improving our manuscript.
This is incorrect. Instead of "I," the writer should have used "me."
Tip: To check your grammar in this situation, remove the proper noun Joan and the conjunction and; then read the sentence without them.
The editor gave ME some tips on improving our manuscript.

Today's homonyms: ALLOWED (permitted) and ALOUD (spoken)
                                 ASCENT (the climb) and ASSENT (to agree)