Editing: What to Consider First: Identifying the 20 Most Common Errors in Student Writing

In their 1988 study, Robert Connor and Andrea Lunsford tallied the most common grammatical errors in 3,000 college essays from across the country. The following is the list, by no means comprehensive, that they developed. Frequency of error may shift across time and geographic lines, but this list provides a general starting place for helping us identify where students need to improve their grammar, usage, and punctuation. Robert Connor and Andrea Lunsford found that though not on the list, misspelled words occurred three times more often than the top error in the study. So, check for misspelled words first!
Identifying the 20 Most Common Errors in Student Writing