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Common English mistakes

For now, we mainly work with engineers for whom English the second or third language. Here are common mistakes we see among them, including real-world examples.
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I. Easy
These mistakes are usually made due to a lack of attention to detail rather than a lack of knowledge. These mistakes are usually easy to catch and learn to prevent.
  1. 1.
    Attention > Typos
    • "Leetcode" -> "LeetCode"
    • "Systems Design Primer" -> "System Design Primer"
  2. 2.
    Attention > Singular vs plural
    • "3 LeetCode problem" -> "3 LeetCode problems"
  3. 3.
    Attention > Spelling
    • "recomendations" -> "recommendations"
  4. 4.
    Attention > Extra spacing
    • "Solve the Wild Card Matching problem" -> "Solve the Wild Card Matching problem"
II. Medium.
These mistakes usually point to a lack of knowledge of "medium complexity" rules in English.
  1. 1.
    Grammar > Missing words
    • "Record a video and share on Telegram" -> "Record a video and share it on Telegram"
  2. 2.
    Grammar > Tenses
    • "I founded one mistake" -> "I found one mistake"
  3. 3.
    Grammar > Word order
    • "Read the Grokking the System Design 1 lecture" -> "Read 1 lecture of the Grokking the System Design" or "Read the Grokking the System Design (1 lecture)"
  4. 4.
    Punctuation > Ending of a bullet point
    • Long phrases in bullet points don’t need a dot at the end, but if it’s a sentence without a bullet point use a dot.
  5. 5.
    Punctuation > General separation
    • Some people write a list of phrases in their resume without using dashes or bullet points.
  6. 6.
    Punctuation > Casing instead of quotes in titles
    • "Read 'Queue and BFS' chapter on LeetCode" -> "Read the Queue and BFS chapter on LeetCode"
II. Larger problems
These mistakes usually point to a lack of knowledge of complex rules in English.
  1. 1.
    Grammar > Articles
    • "Solve problem Reverse Nodes in k-Group" -> "Solve the Reverse Nodes in the k-Group problem"
    • "Conduct interviewing.io coding interview" -> "Conduct an interviewing.io coding interview" or "Conduct one interviewing.io coding interview"
  2. 2.
    Grammar > Prepositions
    • "Read through 3 chapters via the CCI book" -> "Read through 3 chapters of the CCI book"
  3. 3.
    Casing > Capitalizing the first letter of bullet points
  4. 4.
    Casing > Job titles
    • [Usage context: a job title in a resume] "software engineer" -> "Software Engineer"
    • [Usage context: a job title in a resume] "Senior Software engineer" -> "Senior Software Engineer"
In general, we strongly encourage using the most modern spell-checker. As of 2022-06-20, we believe the best is Grammarly.
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Last modified 7mo ago