E! That is sooooooo embarrassing: Mistakes you must avoid At left is a photograph of my granddaughter Kelly. As you can see, she does not resemble me but she does take after me. There are certain common but unacceptable errors that you must avoid in your papers. I will return, ungraded, any paper that contains any of these errors and require you to resubmit it as many times as it takes for you to eliminate all of those marked by E!. Why adopt this unforgiving standard? I have several reasons. First, every time I correct one or another of these errors I stop reading. This means that you have interrupted me, and that is rude. Next, I stop paying attention to the content of your work. In part this is a byproduct of stopping so frequently to make corrections. I lose your train of thought. In part it is a byproduct of my growing annoyance. I actively dislike fixing surface errors. I do it professionally as editor for online projects for the Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. That is enough for me. Finally, certain errors make you look stupid. Do you think I exaggerate? Do you think that I am a particularly harsh judge? If so, you are wrong both times. If you apply for a job, promotion, admission to a graduate or professional program, or anything that requires you to write a cover letter and an essay of some sort, you had better not make any of these mistakes. There are other applicants. Don't give people excuses to pass you by. The following list is incomplete. I will alert you to any additions.

1. Confusing homophones: Homophone: One of two or more words pronounced alike but different in meaning or spelling. Among the errors that make you look most stupid are confusing there, their, and they're or two, too, and to. You can find a growing master list of homonyms (words spelled and pronounced the same but with different meanings) and homophones here.
2. Using apostrophes incorrectly. Apostrophe: a punctuation mark used to mark contractions and the possessive of nouns and pronouns. "They're" requires one because it is a contraction, a shortened form of "they are." All contractions require an apostrophe. "It's" is a contraction for "it is." Because it is, "its" — the possessive of it as in "Every dog has its day" — is an exception to the rule that you must use an apostrophe to indicate the possessive. Using its and meaning it is or using it's and intending to indicate possession makes you look really stupid.
3. Using contractions. You may not use contractions in scholarly prose. There is an exception. If there is a contraction in a quotation, then you not only can, you must use it. You should relish the ban on contractions. It will lower the number of opportunities you have to make an E! mistake. For example, you will never use "it's," only its. You will never use "they're," only there and their.
4. Using an apostrophe to form the plural of a noun. Most nouns in English form the plural by adding "s"; there are exceptions, of course, because we are dealing with English. But, no noun forms the plural by adding 's. This is an especially easy mistake to make in history papers because common usage can lead you astray. You will find even professional historians referring to the "1920's," for example. I am deeply embarrassed for my colleagues. "1920s" is a plural. It refers to the years between 1921 and 1930. It is not a possessive. Decades cannot possess anything! By the way, thinking that the twenties refers to the years between 1920 and 1929 is a common but not an embarrassing mistake. Almost everyone thought that the new millenium began on Jan. 1, 2000. But, remember. The Common Era begins with the year one, not the year zero. Therefore decades begin with 1, 11, 21, and so forth. Centuries begin with 1, 101, 201; millenia begin with 1, 1001, and 2001.
5. Misspellings. Word™ is not perfect, but it probably does a better job of spelling than you do. And you can find numerous dictionaries via Google™ or other search engines. There is no excuse for misspellings.
6. Punctuation errors. Again, Word™ is not perfect, but it probably does a better job of applying standard rules of punctuation than you do.
   • The period aside, the most commonly used punctuation mark is the comma. It is also the most commonly misused. Should you use a comma to separate two independent clauses? Yes, but only if they have different subjects. For example: "John took a nap, and Mary went to the store." Note the comma. But, if the sentence reads, "Mary went to the store and then took a nap," there is no comma. Note in the preceeding sentence that I began it with a conjunction. Such usage is comparatively rare. However, there had to be a comma after the but. Note that the dependent clause, "if the sentence reads," is separated from the independent clause with a comma. Note that the quoted sentence is set off by commas.
   • When should you use a semi-colon? Don't ask! It is never necessary to use a semi-colon. The alternative, almost always preferable, is to break a sentence into separate sentences.
   • When should you use a colon? When constructing a list.
   • When should you use an exclamation point? Don't.

   Don't know the rules governing punctuation? You have three choices. 1) rely on Word™; 2) learn the rules; 3) steer clear of occasions when the rules come into play. The last choice, in effect, requires you to limit yourself to simple, declarative sentences. It worked for Hemingway.

7. Grammatical errors. Once again, you can rely upon Word™. Microsoft has invested a fortune to get the program to recognize the common grammatical errors. Of course, really good writers sometimes intentionally violate rules of grammar. If, and only if, you fall into this category, you can ignore those red lines of warning.

8. Misusing words. If you write "accept" instead of "except" or "then" rather than "than" or "effect" for "affect," Word™ will not come to your rescue. The word pairs are not true homophones, but they are often (mis)pronounced as if they were. As a result, they are frequently confused. If you confuse them, however, you will truly make yourself look stupid. If you catch this Youtube video of The Coasters singing "Along Came Jones," you need never confuse "than" and "then" again. "Then," as you will have drilled into your consciousness, refers to time as in "What happened then?" The song made fun of the craze for TV Westerns in the 1950s. The title comes from a Western movie that starred Gary Cooper.

9. Using "novel" as a synonym for "book." A novel is an extended work of fiction. Jill Lepore and Jane Kamensky discuss their novel Blindspot in an interview published in the Boston Globe. Read it, and never refer to a work of history as a novel again.
   
   Another common source of confusion is Roget's Thesaurus and its online equivalents, such as Thesaurus.com. Our teachers often urge us to not use the same word over and over. Find synonyms, they counsel. This is usually good advice. Usually. (Note that I have deliberately violated a grammatical rule with that last incomplete sentence.) I entered "lady" into Thesaurus.com. Here are the results:

Main Entry: lady
Part of Speech: noun
Definition: woman

Synonyms: adult, babe, bag, baroness, bitch, broad, butterfly, contessa, countess, dame, doll, duchess, empress, female, gal, gentlewoman, girl, little woman, mama, mare, matron, missus, mistress, noblewoman, old bag, old lady, old woman, petticoat, princess, queen, queen bee, rib, squaw, sultana, weaker sex

Antonyms: man

This is a mess. Suppose you are writing about the minstrel song, "Nelly Was A Lady." It is an 1849 composition by Stephen Foster in which a sad old slave laments the death of his wife. Which of the synonyms above might you use? Baroness? Bitch? Broad? None of the above? It is easy to be led astray by a thesaurus. The most common problem is illustrated by the cartoon. We too frequently choose synonyms that are not ordinarily used in everyday speech. They make our writing affected.

10. Using jargon. The goal in writing history is to make your prose comprehensible to intelligent, educated people who are not experts in the subject. This means that you should avoid technical terms. I recently reviewed a manuscript for a journal. The author used the word "interpellate" several times. Its original meaning, according to Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary is "to question (as a foreign minister) formally concerning an official action or policy or personal conduct" usually in a parliamentary setting. That was not how the manuscript's author was using the term. Instead the author drew upon Louis Althusser, a Marxist intellectual, who appropriated the word to

describe the process by which ideology addresses the (abstract) pre-ideological individual thus effectively producing him or her as subject proper. Henceforth, Althusser goes against the classical definition of the subject as cause and substance: in other words, the situation always precedes the (individual or collective) subject, which precisely as subject is "always-already interpellated." Althusser's argument here strongly draws from Jacques Lacan's concept of the Mirror stage and reveals obvious parallels with the work of his former student Michel Foucault in its antihumanist insistence on the secondary status of the subject as mere effect of social relations and not vice versa. Interpellation specifically involves the moment and process of recognition of interaction with the ideology at hand.

Or so says the entry in Wikipedia. Go, and do thou not likewise. (With apologies to Luke, 10:37; this injunction playfully refers to the final sentence in the parable of the Good Samaritan in the King James Version.)