6 Writing Mistakes I See All the Time

The usual suspects I see as an editor.

Adrian Drew
9 min readMay 3, 2023
Photo by Angelina Litvin on Unsplash

As a professional writer and the editor of a viral publication, I see writers making the same fatal errors day in and day out when producing their content.

It’s a shame. Often, a piece will tick so many boxes and yet leave a few critical ones unchecked.

Small, easily-fixable errors turn an excellent article into an average one. A few simple mistakes can paint a writer as sloppy and incompetent in the eyes of their readers, a title that is both underserved and quick to amend.

As I go about my editing responsibilities, I frequently take notes in another tab when I spy these errors. I’ve been compiling a short list of the most common mistakes I’ve spotted in the articles I read, and it’s this list that I’d like to share with you today.

There are six key blunders I see all of the time.

Let’s get right into them.

1. Switching Person When Making a Point

One of the most common mistakes I spot has to do with the perspective of the writer. All the time I see authors jumping between first, second, and third person, even within the same sentence.

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Adrian Drew

Owner of Mind Cafe | Let’s chat on Instagram: @adriandrew__