English Grammar Prep – Toronto, Canada – (416) 410-7737

I once had a job opening for an editor on my team. In the middle of an interview, I noticed the candidate–an otherwise very nice man–had a giant piece of spinach wedged into his teeth.

This was no speck; had I a pair of tweezers, I probably could have plucked it out and used it to swaddle a grape.

As hard as it was to watch him smile and answer my questions, the salad to-go didn’t cost him the job. The grammatical errors on his Web site–a spelling error and a missing comma–were another story, though. As gross as the spinach was, I could look away from it. Typos, on the other hand, I could not ignore, and as nice as he was, I had to turn him down.

That’s the thing with bad grammar. It’s the intellectual equivalent of spinach in your teeth, especially when you’re at work or looking for a better job. With that in mind, here are five errors that are easy to prevent. Think of them as mental floss.

To see the five rules: