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.

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. Attention > Typos

   • "Leetcode" -> "LeetCode"

   • "Systems Design Primer" -> "System Design Primer"

2. Attention > Singular vs plural

   • "3 LeetCode problem" -> "3 LeetCode problems"

3. Attention > Spelling

   • "recomendations" -> "recommendations"

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. Grammar > Missing words

   • "Record a video and share on Telegram" -> "Record a video and share it on Telegram"

2. Grammar > Tenses

   • "I founded one mistake" -> "I found one mistake"

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. 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. Punctuation > General separation

   • Some people write a list of phrases in their resume without using dashes or bullet points.

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. 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. Grammar > Prepositions

   • "Read through 3 chapters via the CCI book" -> "Read through 3 chapters of the CCI book"

3. Casing > Capitalizing the first letter of bullet points

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.