A reader has questions about the following type of sentence: “the education chief’s sudden resignation left him scrambling to find a replacement”. This construction – “left her struggling to/has seen him battling…” is common. I haven’t been able to classify the -ing form in such sentences. I ruled out gerund (“his scrambling” can’t be right), and I don’t … Read more
An often-noted difference between English and the Romance languages is that in English, adjectives precede the noun. English-speakers say “the red car,” whereas French-speakers say, “the car red” (la voiture rouge). Nevertheless, English possesses many examples of post-positive adjectives: adjectives that follow the noun. Some of these after-the-noun adjectives belong to set phrases, collocations whose … Read more
The words good and well have been in English since its earliest incarnation. When Beowulf finds the ancient sword in the underwater cave of Grendel’s mother, one of the words used to describe it is good. Likewise, when the Beowulf poet contemplates the afterlife, he says, “Well [i.e., “in a state of good fortune”] is … Read more
In Old English—the principal language spoken in England from the mid-fifth century until the Norman Conquest in 1066—English verbs were of two main kinds: Weak and Strong. OE weak verbs formed their past tense endings with dental suffixes that have survived into modern English as our -ed endings: walk (present) walked (simple past) have/had/has walked … Read more
Do you struggle with spelling and grammar? Even if you’re a native English speaker, there might well be grammatical rules that confuse you – and you may find that you spend a lot of time poring over your draft text, trying to figure out what needs to be edited. This is where grammar checker apps … Read more
One fairly infrequent but prominent error in sentence composition is the careless confusion of a word or a phrase with the person, place, or thing that it represents, which usually occurs when the term is being defined or explained. The sentences below have this problem, or a related one, in common; discussion and a revision … Read more
A reader has asked for help in distinguishing noun, adjective, and adverb clauses. First, what is a clause? A clause is a group of words that contains a subject and a finite verb. (A finite verb shows time such as present, past, or future.) Clauses are of two main kinds: independent and dependent. An independent … Read more
When a sentence includes a form of parenthesis—a word, phrase, or clause framed by a pair of commas, dashes, or parentheses—writers must take care that the statement surrounding the interjection is structurally valid so that if the optional parenthesis is omitted, the remaining wording is still coherent and thus the parenthesis makes sense grammatically. To … Read more
Merriam-Webster recently announced that it has provided an additional sense in the definition for the pronoun they: “used to refer to a single person whose gender identity is nonbinary.” What does this mean? First, two more definitions: Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary defines “gender identity” as “a person’s internal sense of being male, female, some combination of … Read more
A reader wants to know “if there is a rule for the proper placement of an adverb in sentence structure.” The general rule with adverbs is to place the adverb as close as possible to the word being modified. Most adverbs can go in one of three positions in a sentence. First position (before the … Read more
A reader poses two grammar questions, one on linking verb agreement and one on pronoun case. Question One What is the rule that governs which linking verb to use when the subject is singular and the predicate is plural? The highlight for me ______ the poems that Mary wrote and read.” was or were? The … Read more
When referring to a paraphrased question, writers often introduce grammatical mistakes in the course of confusing the query for a quoted question. In the following sentences, errors are introduced in the course of posing an indirect question (or, in the case of the final example, a direct one). Discussion of the specific error, and a … Read more