Learners of the English language often have a hard time differentiating when to use "a" or "an." To avoid this, the person must decide if the sentence has an accountable or unaccountable noun. An accountable noun is something that is tangible and physical like an umbrella. Advice is an example of an unaccountable noun, which would not have an article in front of it. Also, a person should use "a" before a word that starts with a consonant and "an" before words that start with a vowel or any word that starts with an unsounded "h."
Capitalization can be more complex than one might think. In the English language, "I" is always capitalized, along with the first word of any sentence, proper nouns and family relationships. For example, "I ate the waffles Dad made" uses Dad as a proper noun and should be capitalized. If the sentence was phrased, "I ate the waffles made by my dad," the capitalization would not be needed because "dad" in this case is not a proper noun.
A subject, or noun, and verb in a clause must always agree in number. If a sentence has a non-agreeing subject and verb, the writing is awkward and in most cases very difficult to read. If there is more that one subject, use the plural form of the verb. For example, "We are going to the mall in the afternoon." We contains more than one person and must use the verb "are." The incorrect way to say this would be, "We is going to the mall in the afternoon."
Often in the English language, there are words that sound the same but are spelled differently and have different definitions. A person who is confused by these words must learn the definitions to determine when to use them correctly. For example, "its" and "it's" are frequently misused. Other examples of words that can be easily confused are affect/effect, lead/led and accept/except.