Grammar Fun

It never ceases to amaze me how little effort some writers put into their promotional writing for their own books. After slaving away for months or even years writing a book, surely the book deserves a little extra time and effort to promote it in the best possible light. Some book descriptions, author bios, social …

One part of speech that I often see with grammatical errors or incorrect use is the subjunctive. In other languages it takes a different form or conjugation so is clearly recognisable, but in English it can be a bit tricky as it uses the bare infinitive. The subjunctive is utilised in formal, and more so …

One of the most used, but misunderstood points of grammar is the gerund. Although it is something that as writers we use naturally and without thinking, a little understanding of its use can improve one’s writing considerably. Especially in forming interesting sentence forms that avoid over use of the standard subject-verb construction. So, let’s have …

For some odd reason, I started searching for the longest sentence ever written in English and was amazed to find that in fact, a sentence of 469,375.2 words was actually written by Nigel Tomm in a book titled The Blah Story that had twenty-three different covers, which must surely be a record for covers and words, although …

Writing always seems to be such a serious business. Novels, articles, technical documents, journalism plus one  hundred other serious applications of this worthiest of arts. Being a pedantic member of the grammar police and spelling firing squad, I also take my métier very seriously. Paying strict attention to my use of each part of speech in its …

For some, playing with the English language may not be your cup of tea, but I love it. One of my favourite parts of speech is the difference of meaning between gerunds and infinitive verb forms. While some verbs change meaning completely, others remain more or less the same. But knowing which ones change and …

As social networking is predominately text driven, it really is a good idea to make sure your writing is up to an acceptable and readable standard. There’s nothing worse than reading a tweet, Google+ or Facebook entry or blog post that is full of errors. It really gives an impression to the reader that you are a either careless, …

For those of you who are scribblers, do you ever stop and consider what verbs you are using? Or do you think about what verbs you are using? It is easy to surmise that verbs as grammatical, but I prefer to perceive them as vocabulary. I receive many emails each day and I get a load more …

Dialogue tags must be the most written about and discussed structure in a writer’s grammatical toolbox. One that I haven’t mentioned before as I didn’t want to join the long and probably never ending debate. However, after getting close to finishing reading the third Harry Potter book, (yes I know I’m a bit late in …

When I formed my publishing company (Portmanteau Press LLC), I was shocked and appalled that I received the following question from numerous people (my CPA, the lady at the bank, my mother!): what is a portmanteau? Now, I feel the need to educate people about this wonderful language device. Being that Derek’s blog is called …

My habitually horrid habit continues unfortunately. No matter how hard I try, I just can’t seem to avoid adorable alliterations. It all started with mild mannered Milo Moon of course, and I blame him entirely for my current irresponsible idiosyncrasy. Then of course I ventured into the unbelievably unknown universe of February The Fifth and …

This simplest way to send a reader sound asleep is by being repetitive. Not only by repetitive elements in the story, but by grammatical repetition. This is an easy trap to fall into, particularly in dialogue. Even four or five uses of ‘he said or she said’ will be enough to induce reader slumber. A …

Inside is the opposite if outside. Logically. So, the opposite of hangover must be hangunder then? And the positive of disappointed is appointed? The ‘un’ and ‘um’ prefixes are easier though. Simply a matter of sound, phonetics and clear logic. An umbrella can’t be an umbrella now can it? And umbridge is not a hesitation in crossing …

While some may not know, I don’t have a reputation for positivity. This is not to say I don’t like positivity, it’s just that it isn’t as much fun. For one thing, positive sentences aren’t as long as short non-negative ones. Secondly, positive sentences don’t let you use the fun apostrophe nearly as much except …

It may come as a surprise to learn that the English language contains some complexity. We are always told that it is a rather simple language as it has no masculine, feminine or neuter to worry about. Neither does it have special grammatical structures such as the subjunctive in French or the accusative and dative …

My recent post gave you a small example of what is expected of an advanced learner of English. So today I thought I would up the difficulty level by giving you a sample of the expectations of the proficiency level. So have fun seeing how good your English really is. For questions 1-15, read the …

One of my favourite Cambridge examination components was key word transformation . It truly was a test of a student’s knowledge of English at both First Certificate and Advanced levels. However it is also a great exercise for accomplished writers. I still love doing them as it fine tunes my writing skills by having to …

This lovely list of puns arrived in my inbox recently. I tried to find the original version, but it seems it has been posted many, many times. If the original author finds this post, I would very much like to add the source. 1. A bicycle can’t stand alone. It is two tired. (“tyred” in …

When teaching English writing, one of the most common mistakes I came across was the use of the comma. On asking my students why they had placed a comma in a certain position, they often justified it by saying that it was for a pause for breath. Well when we read we don’t need to …

Did you K-now that the silent K in words like K-nee and K-nickK-nack was actually pronounced in Old English. For some reason however, people could not get the K-nack of pronouncing the K as well as the N. So the K sound got K-nocked off. People got all K-notted up and tongue tied when they …

We can all recognise formal and informal texts, but you may not know that it has a name. It is called ‘Register’. The scales of register are generally classified as Formal, Neutral, Informal and Vulgar. In this sense, vulgar refers to childish or common utterances and not rude jokes. Here are two example letters. Very …

1. Verbs HAS to agree with their subjects. 2. Never use a preposition to end a sentence with. Winston Churchill, corrected on this error once, responded to the young man who corrected him by saying “Young man, that is the kind of impudence up with which I will not put! 3. And don’t start a …

For those of us who write, proofreading and error correction is a necessary process, no matter how time consuming it may be. However it is frighteningly difficult to find some of these errors on occasions because our brain can do very silly things when we read. As you will see when you read this lovely …

The most common sound when we make in English is called the Schwa. It represents up to 15% of our utterances. However, so few people have heard of it. It’s the sound we make when we say ‘cup of tea’, and really say ‘cuppa tea’. It’s this little ‘uh’ sound we use in this example …

One of the most common word forms in English is ‘ing’. Sometimes referred to as the gerund, present participle or progressive form. It has such a multitude of uses that a single label just cannot be affixed to these amazing three letters. So broad is their use that Michael Swan prefers the simple label of …

Nothin’ don’t tell tell the blues like bad grammar. Now I ain’t gonna say that no one don’t know like me, ‘cause they do. Don’t they? If it ain’t gonna do you no good, it’s the blues. Didn’t John Lee tell us right. My baby she gone, she been gone two night I ain’t seen …

The grammatical term of the present in English is a bit of trap. Yes it is a tense, but when combined with the four basic aspects of simple, progressive (or continuous), perfect and perfect progressive the concept of the present being the now type present goes out the window. The confusion starts with the present …

English has one of the coolest, and at the same time most mysterious of verbs. Verbs to me are the motors that drive phrases and sentences. Normally, as in most languages, these verbs are one word. But in English we have the special and totally cool phrasal verb. Sometimes now called the multi-word verb. They …

The possessive adjective in English must be the most difficult to master. When is it a plain old adjective such as a car door? Or is that really a compound noun? When is it possessive as in a hair’s breadth? Is it a woman’s leg, or a woman leg? Or is at a chair’s leg, …

“I am called Sylvie, and we are three in our family, and during two weeks we have been in Spain taking a wonderful holiday. We were very interested to see the bull fighting and we had a lovely weather all the time we were there. I am the only child in my family, but my …

While all languages have their positive attributes, be it structure, rhythm, sound or lexis, English has one of the most unique tenses. It is one that we tend to forget all about when we are writing. In some manner it does exist in some other languages, but not to the extent that it can be …

By far the most useful and beautifully flexible part of speech just has to be the wonderfully versatile adverb. It can not only describe a verb and an adjective but even another adverb. How incredibly super cool is that? How can a part of speech do something to itself? Look at the complexity of adverb …

  When is it better to use a relative clause, defining or non-defining, and when is it better (like in this case) to use brackets. I have no idea. And does the word Mum always carry a capital, or only when it is in reported speech? Same question with Dad and Grandma I suppose. Just …