Frequently Encountered English Errors

This is a list I have begun collecting of commonly made mistakes in written or spoken English that I have encountered. I plan to update this list with more examples over time. Since I am located in the Netherlands, this list is somewhat biased towards common mistakes made by native Dutch speakers.

• explain
  

  A common mistake I see with explain goes something like this: I will explain you my work. Explain is generally followed by two things: the thing being explained (direct object) and the thing receiving the explanation (indirect object). The indirect object should be preceded by "to". The direct object often precedes the indirect object. The correct way to state the above sentence is: I will explain my work to you. A variation on this is: I will explain something about my work to you. See also tell below.

• next to
  

  Misuse of next to is common amongst Dutch speakers. An example of the common misuse is: Next to my research, I have several hobbies. In English, "next to" can be used to indicate adjacency (England is next to Scotland.). It can also be somewhat synonymous with "after" to indicate an ordering (Next to chocolate, vanilla is my favorite ice cream flavor. or After chocolate, vanilla is my favorite ice cream flavor.). In sentences like those in the misuse example, in addition to or besides should be used. Example: In addition to my research, I have several hobbies.

• respectively
  

  Respectively is used to relate a the elements of two lists to each other in an ordered, pairwise fashion. It is necessary to have both two lists and for both lists to have the same number of elements. Example: Red and blue are colors that are used, respectively, to represent hot and cold.

• tell
  

  Here's an example of a common mistake with tell: I will tell something about my work. Tell is generally followed by two things: the thing being told (direct object, e.g. a story) and the thing receiving the telling (indirect object, e.g. an audience). With tell, the indirect object often precedes the direct object. If this is the case, then the indirect object is not preceded by "to". One correct way to state the above sentence is: I will tell you something about my work.