Several abbreviation conventions exist in English. The main thing is to be consistent in your application. Abbreviations are formed by the omission of the end of a word (for example, the word ‘abbreviation’ can itself be abbreviated to abbr.), whereas a contraction is formed by the subtraction of a middle part (for example, ‘Doctor’ contracts to Dr). In British English, the general rule is that an abbreviation is followed by a full stop, whereas contractions are not.

Acronyms and intitialisms are treated differently by publishers in various circumstances. The best piece of advice would be to be regular in your choice of style. For instance, if writing an essay on charities, do not talk about the NSPCC and the R.S.P.C.A. Also, if an intitalism is to be used several times within a piece, always write out the institution, or other body being abbreviated, in full in the first instance.

Their, they’re and there.

Importance: High

This is one of the most commonly made (and easily avoided) spelling errors in the English Language, in my opinion. The three words have mutually exclusive uses, and should be easy enough to not confuse, with the memorising of a few simple rules:

‘There‘ is used in relation to a place. If you could use the word here instead, to make a grammatically correct sentence (albeit with a slightly different meaning), this is the word you should be using.

‘Their’ is a possessive word. It is used when referring to multiple ownership. If you could replace the word with her, his or its, then this is the correct word.

‘They’re’ is a contraction of the words they and are. If you say the sentence out loud, with these two words replacing they’re, and it makes sense, then this is the correct word to use.

Bibliographic formatting.

Importance Moderate-High

When submitting work, particularly at university level, a well set-out bibliography can be crucial in obtaining those few extra marks. Generally, a given university or department will have a standard bibliographical requirement for works submitted. Other times, a tutor will indicate the type of bibliography required for a piece of work. Although this may seem an arduous task to perform after all that writing, it still needs to be done. Make sure you have access to guidelines for the formatting style you require close to hand to check all formatting is correct. And remember, web pages must also be included in a bibliography, alongside the date(s) upon which they were accessed. If you are unsure about whether your bibliography has been set out correctly, it may be a good idea to have it professionally proofread.

Americanised spelling.

Importance: Low-Moderate

Depending on how strict a tutor is, they may be unkeen on non-British English words being employed within a piece of work. Most cases that you come across are easy to detect- a writer has generally been over-reliant on their computer’s spellchecker, which has been set to an ‘American English’ or other setting, and the most noticeable examples to a proofreader are those ending in the suffix our/or, such as color, neighbor, labor and others .

One other common problem along these lines is the interchanging of the suffixes ‘ise‘ and ‘ize‘ within written work. Ideally, a writer should be consistent in their application of either. However, as both are considered acceptable within the English language, most spellcheckers do not pick up on the fact that the writer has used both suffixes in a work, and so a careful proofread is often a good idea, to ensure that the application method has been consistent.

Words in their full form- should’ve, could’ve, would’ve

Importance: High

This is probably the worst grammatical mistake that I see on a daily basis. People write these words the way they pronounce them, often resulting in ‘should of‘ ‘could of‘ and ‘would of‘. The clue is in the contraction; the ending ‘ve is derived from have. The contracted form isn’t particularly favoured when written, and so these words should be written ’should have‘ ‘could have‘ and ‘would have‘. These should always be written so, with no exceptions. Many people even take this a step further, with phrases such as ‘hadn’t of‘ as opposed to ‘hadn’t have‘. Unfortunately, this isn’t one of those problems that can be rectified by saying the sentence out loud. This rule needs to be learned, but it isn’t too difficult.