Grammatically Correct: The writer's essential guide to punctuation ...

GRAMMATICALLY CORRECT
We applied ourselves to the task with diligency.
Should be diligence. This error possibly arises from an association
with similar words-assiduity, alacrity, industry.
They decided to buy the house, irregardless of the cost.
Should be regardless. This error likely arises from a confusion with
the similar word irrespective.
The photographs of the injured birds were heartwrenching.
Should be heartrending. This extremely common error-which is
made regularly by members of the media, who should know betterpresumably
arises from a confusion with the similar word gutwrenching.
Keep your internal organs straight!
Fortunately, there was no reoccurrence of the trouble.
Should be recurrence. The word does mean "to occur again," but
does not follow the general rule of adding re to the root word.
The following sentences contain redundancies. Keep in mind that
some words carry inherent meanings that should not be repeated
by any modifiers.
If the problem still persists, call your service representative.
If you order now, you will receive a free gift.
The first should be just persists: Anything that is persisting is, by
definition, still happening. The second should be just gift: A gift, by
definition, is free. (Examples such as the latter are typical of marketing
hype, whose practitioners can't seem to resist the temptation
to use words that they think will grab the consumer.)
The following sentences contain examples of inappropriately
using a noun as a verb (or verbing a noun, as this problem is called
in the editing trade).
We hope to transition from the old schedule to the new one by next
month.
The consultant managed to architect a solution to the problem.
The first sentence should read make the transition, and the second,
design or come up with. Resist the temptation to save a word or
two, or to sound fancy, by forcing a noun into an unnatural role. In
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