formerly University of Missouri-Rolla

Missouri S&T Communications
105 Campus Support Facility
1201 State St.
Rolla, MO 65409-0220
(573) 341-4260
(573) 341-6157 (fax)
comm@mst.edu

Common mistakes

Style errors. We've all made them. Below is a partial list of some of the most common and how to avoid them.

 

Affect/effectAffect as a verb means "to influence." Example: "The race will affect the team standings."
Affect as a noun is best avoided.
Effect as a verb means "to cause." Example: "He will effect many changes to the campus."
Effect as a noun means "result." Example: "The effects of her decision are not yet evident."
  
emailShould always be lowercase with no hyphen -- email
  
Entitled/titled  Entitled means "a right to do or to have something" and should not be synonymous with titled or called.
Example:  "John McManus' latest book is titled The 7th Infantry Regiment."
  
That/whichUse that for essential clauses - information that can't be removed without altering the meaning of the sentence. Do not set it off with commas.

Example: "Missouri S&T is one of the four campuses that make up the University of Missouri System."

Use which for non-essential clauses - information that can be dropped without altering the meaning of the sentence. A which clause should be surrounded by commas.

Example: "The Missouri Miner, which is published weekly, is the Missouri S&T student newspaper."