Rules to Know the Right Methods to Spot Errors (2024)

Error spotting is the way of identifying grammatical errors in English, and comes under the verbal ability section of the English language. It is widely used to judge one’s hold on English language and Grammar.

Generally, candidates have to find only one error in a question, such as punctuations, but sometimes it may be multiple. Some questions may contain errors of different types. For instance, What is the boys playing. There are two errors in this sentence: the verb and the second is the punctuation. The correct way of writing is: What are the boys playing?

Error spotting

Sentences, words, and phrases are the roots of any language. Errors in sentences leave a poor impression on the readers. It becomes difficult to understand the exact meaning of these sentences, and they also change the meaning of the sentence. So, error spotting is a systematic way of identifying and rectifying these errors. It is commonly used while proofreading and editing written documents.

Error spotting rules

Let’s understand the different error spotting rules.

Rule 1: Check and identify the part of the speech.

A part of speech classifies the way a word functions in a sentence. There are eight parts of speech in English Grammar: interjection, adjective, pronoun, verb, noun, preposition, adverb, and conjunction. For finding the part of speech of any sentence, check the function and role of words in a sentence.

• If the word is a naming word, like having a name of any place, person and so forth, then the sentence is a noun.
• If the word is replacing the noun, then it is the pronoun.
• If the word is showing an action, then it is the verb.
• If the word depicts the quality of a noun, then it is an adjective.
• If the word is modifying the verb and adjective, it is an adverb.
• If the word connects the other words, then it is a conjunction.
• If the word describes the relationship between noun and pronoun, then it is a proposition.

Example:

Q: Ram are playing.

Ans: Here, ram is a noun and “are” is not a correct helping verb. So, correct formation of this sentence is:

Ram is playing.

Rule 2: Identify the type of sentence.

The three kinds of sentences in English Grammar are interrogative, affirmative, and negative sentences. If the sentence is written in the general form, with subject, verb, and object, then, the sentence is affirmative. If the sentence consists of a ‘not’ with the verb, the sentence is negative. If the helping verb of the sentence is written in the beginning or it consists of question words like why, how, where, then the sentence is interrogative.

Example:

Q: How are you going?

Answer: Where are you going?

Rule 3: Check the punctuation.

Punctuation plays a major role in demonstrating the exact rhythm of the paragraph. Checking commas, question marks, full stops, and other punctuations is important. If two sentences are joined to form one sentence, then they must have a comma in between to show the separation. If the sentence is ending, then it must have a full stop. And, if the sentence consists of a question word and a helping word in the beginning, then it must have a question mark.

Example:

Q: How are you,

Answer: How are you?

Rule 4: Identify the pronouns.

Pronouns are words used in place of nouns. Different types of pronouns take different nouns in the sentences, so one must know the correct pronoun while replacing a noun.

Example:

Q: Ram is a boy. She is playing cricket.

Answer: Ram is a boy. He is playing cricket.

Rule 5: Identify the singularity and plurality.

Sentences in the English language are either singular or plural. There are specific rules to identify which sentence is singular and plural. Typically, the s/es are checked to identify the nouns and sentences as singular or plural.

Example:

Q: Many boy are dancing together.

Answer: Many boys are dancing together.

Error spotting exercises

Let’s understand the error spotting in detail with error spotting exercises.

• Error spotting for checking the punctuation.

In the village. A large number of people live in one family? Due to this,” numerous disputes occur between them; it results in higher tensions between the families?

Correct way

In the village, a large number of people live in one family. Due to this, numerous disputes usually occur between them. It results in higher tensions between the families.

• Error spotting for checking the singularity and plurality.

There are two families of bear that live in the forest. One bear has 5 childs. Another one has 2 children. All these children fight with each other. Due to this, parents keep them apart.

Correct way

There are two families of bears that live in the forest. One bear has five children. Another one has two children. All the children fight with each other. Due to this, the parents keep them apart.

Conclusion

Error spotting is widely used to check the grammatical skills of any candidate. It appears in the General English – Verbal Ability section. The mistakes can be in punctuation, subject-verb agreement, singular-plural, and any other parts of speech. One must be careful about the grammatical and puntuctuational errors to be able to spot and resolve them.