Why word choice trips you up more than grammar
Most word-choice mistakes don’t come from not knowing English. They come from carrying over a sentence structure that works perfectly in your first language into one where it doesn’t quite fit. Spellcheck won’t catch them, grammar checkers often wave them through, and they tend to surface exactly when you can least afford to sound unsure — mid-disagreement, mid-feedback, mid-follow-up on something that’s gone quiet for three days. Here are the ones that show up most often at work, grouped by what’s actually going wrong, with the quick fix for each.
Verbs that come with their own baggage
“Discuss about.” Discuss already means “talk about,” so adding “about” doubles it up. Native speakers notice the redundancy even when they can’t say why it sounds slightly off.
Wrong: “I want to discuss about the timeline with you.” Fix: “I want to discuss the timeline with you.”
“Explain me.” Explain doesn’t take a person as its direct object — you explain something to someone, you don’t explain someone something.
Wrong: “Can you explain me why the numbers changed?” Fix: “Can you explain to me why the numbers changed?” (or drop “to me” entirely — “Can you explain why the numbers changed?” works fine on its own)
“Make a research.” Research is uncountable and pairs with do or conduct, not make. Save “make” for a mistake, a decision, or a plan.
Wrong: “Let’s make a research before we commit to the vendor.” Fix: “Let’s do some research before we commit to the vendor.”
Small words that quietly change the meaning
“Since a long time.” Since marks a starting point — since 2019, since Monday. For marks a duration. Swapping them is one of the most common tells in ESL business writing, and it’s an easy one to fix once you see the pattern.
Wrong: “I’ve been on this account since three years.” Fix: “I’ve been on this account for three years.” (or “since 2023,” if you want to name the start date instead)
“As per.” Technically correct, but it reads like a clause in a contract, not a line from a colleague. It’s fine once in a compliance memo; in a Slack message it makes a routine request sound like a citation.
Wrong: “As per your email, I’ve updated the deck.” Fix: “Like you mentioned in your email, I’ve updated the deck.” Or simply: “Updated the deck per your note.”
Phrases that are standard somewhere, confusing everywhere else
A few phrases are completely normal within one English-speaking business culture and land strangely outside it. Worth knowing which side of that line your reader is standing on.
“Revert back.” Revert already means “go back,” so “revert back” is redundant by itself. In Indian business English, “revert” alone is also commonly used to mean “reply” — a usage most American and European readers won’t parse correctly, since to them revert still means reverse or undo.
Wrong: “I’ll revert back to you by Thursday.” Fix (for a mixed or global audience): “I’ll get back to you by Thursday.”
“Prepone.” A genuinely useful word that simply doesn’t exist outside South Asian English. Most readers will guess the meaning from context, but it registers as a typo, not a word choice.
Wrong: “Can we prepone the call to 2pm?” Fix: “Can we move the call up to 2pm?”
“I have a doubt.” In standard English, doubt usually implies distrust — “I doubt he’ll finish on time” — rather than a request for clarification. “I have a doubt about the contract” can quietly read as “I don’t trust this contract,” which is a very different message than the one you meant to send.
Wrong: “I have a doubt regarding clause 4.” Fix: “I have a question about clause 4.” (If you do mean you’re unconvinced, say that directly: “I’m not sure clause 4 covers this case.”)
One that’s about tone, not vocabulary
“Kindly.” Grammatically fine, but “kindly do the needful” or “kindly revert” reads as either overly formal or faintly irritated to a US or UK reader, depending on the sentence around it — often the opposite of the politeness you intended. In most workplace English, a direct “could you” or a plain “please” carries the same courtesy without the stiffness.
Wrong: “Kindly send the file by EOD.” Fix: “Could you send the file by end of day?”
The pattern underneath all of these
None of the mistakes above are grammar errors — a checker will wave every single one of them through, because structurally there’s nothing broken. What they share is that each one is built on a construction, an idiom, or a politeness convention borrowed from another language or regional English, and dropped word-for-word into a sentence where it doesn’t carry the same meaning. The fix is rarely a rule to memorize; it’s noticing which of your default phrases are borrowed, and learning what your reader’s English actually expects in that spot instead.
That’s the harder half of writing in a second language — not the grammar, but knowing which instincts to trust. It’s also why Copynote’s grammar review doesn’t just silently swap “discuss about” for “discuss” — it explains the fix in your own language, so the reasoning sticks instead of disappearing into a correction you clicked past without reading.
