CuteWriting

Here are a few words: Accordingly Also Henceforth Indeed In fact As a result However Therefore Hence Moreover Meanwhile Certainly Nonetheless Otherwise Finally Incidentally Likewise Meanwhile All of these are adverbs, which can function also as conjunctions. Hence, they are called conjunctive adverbs. An adverb is any term that modifies a verb, adjective, or another adverb, and a conjunction is a term that connects two clauses. When using conjunctive adverbs, you should follow punctuation rules carefully. When a conjunctive adverb connects two independent clauses, it is actually like two different sentences. But the second sentence is made to factually depend on the first with the conjunctive adverb. Therefore, the first sentence should end in a semicolon or a period, and the conjunctive adverb should be followed by a comma. Here are examples: Alan is only a chiropractor; naturally, he has never had the respect of an actual doctor. James is no longer with the ...

These two constructions always make me confused. Could you just explain them to me, please? – James Vaughn James is not the only person that has this doubt. These two are complex constructions, and are frowned upon by many native and foreign speakers of English. So, let's have a look at them today. Both 'No Sooner…Than' and 'Hardly…When' are used to mean exactly the same. It is when something has happened just before something else. The first of the actions, expressed with 'no sooner' or 'hardly', has happened right before the part after 'than' or 'when'. One thing to remember with these constructions is never to use 'when' with 'no sooner' or 'than' with 'hardly'. No sooner is clearly a comparative construction and has to be followed by 'than' as in any comparative form. You can replace 'hardly' with 'scarcely'. Examples: Here are a few examples for you to understand...

Earlier, you may remember we published a list of confusable words . Here we are again, with such a list of words. Abjure/Adjure: Abjure means "to formally renounce (give up) something" such as a position. Adjure on the other hand means 'to appeal to' or 'solemnly order'. The governor decided to abjure his position due to political pressure. Normally, adjuring to the subordinates doesn't give many results. Amount/Number: Use amount when you have uncountable subject. Use number when it is countable. The amount of love one gets depends on the number of friends one has. Appraise/Apprise: Appraise is the word applied to quantitative evaluation of something. Apprise means 'communicate' or 'inform'. Appraising diamonds is the work of an expert. Joe apprised me of the schedule of events. Attorney/Lawyer/Solicitor: These terms are highly misinterpreted and confused by many people. Let me clarify. In the US, an attorney is any member...

Look at these sentences: The members of the parliament and their wives were present at the party, and most of them were visibly under the influence. In order to improve their prowess, amateur actors were cast alongside professionals, and they looked slightly offended. Tom and his brother are in the same company, and he is doing better. All these sentences have at least two main nouns and one pronoun, which arouses confusion as to which it is referring to. This article will help you think more of your readers in order to avoid confusion in sentences involving pronouns. Pronoun Agreement Every pronoun refers to one noun, which may have been referenced in the same sentence or anyone preceding it. The pronoun should always agree with the noun. Pronouns like anyone, every, each, none, etc., are singular, while they, these, all, etc., are always plural. Check out these sentences: Jenny's friends were home, and they were excited (clearly, they refers to Jenny's friends). J...

Writing a good article requires you to connect well with the readers. In case of blogs, this is especially true since they represent more or less colloquial use of language. It is hence very important to connect your thoughts and sentences well without overlapping or interleaving thoughts which go someplace else. When you write a paragraph, there are often ideas that have relationships with the ones that precede them. Such ideas have to be interconnected with transitional tags. Here are the various connectives you can use for various requirements. Adding ideas Use: and, also, in addition, again, and then, besides, further, furthermore, in the first place, moreover, still, too Comparison Use: also, likewise, in the same way, similarly, exactly Contrast Use: although, however, nevertheless, notwithstanding, yet, at the same time, in spite of that, despite, even so, even though, for all that, in contrast, instead, on the contrary, on the other hand, otherwise, regardless, still, th...

Here we make a comeback to the grammar topic for bloggers, writers, and webmasters. Let's look at a popular topic: difference between adjectives and adverbs. I have received two or three mails from readers asking to post difference between them. An adjective is any term that modifies a particular noun, such as those italicized in the following sentences; the part in bold are the modified nouns. Studious John finds it easy to complete his lessons. Tom, who is fast and furious, finds it difficult to make friends. I am happy to learn that you weren't hurt. On the other hand, an adverb modifies a verb, an adjective, or another adverb. Examples are below. Joe finished her lessons quickly to move out earlier. The happily married couple has two pet dogs. Eerily disturbing, the night passed much slowly. John creates troubles very easily. Above, the part 'eerily disturbing' is itself a compound adjective that modifies 'the night'; so is 'happily marrie...

Here are a few examples: My cat seems in need for milk. My friends and I were walking by the park when we saw Jim sitting in. Joe as well as her friends is very playful. Either Sally or her cousins are afraid of dogs. Neither Sally's cousins nor she is afraid of cats. In all of these sentences, we have used appropriate verb forms. The subject verb agreement rules that the singular subject needs a singular verb and plural subject, plural verb. This rule is pretty obvious in simple sentences like the first two above, but the others seem to need some more clarification. 1. As Well As When combining any two subjects with as well as, always agree the verb with the first subject. Examples: Jim as well as his friends is a good swimmer. Jim's friends as well as Jim are good swimmers. Emmerich's films as well as Spielberg's are interesting to me. 2. Either (Neither) Or When combining subjects with 'or', always agree with the subject nearest to the ver...

We haven't been touching the grammar topics lately. Therefore, here is a comeback. We are dealing with absolute constructions here. An absolute construction consists of a noun and an associated modifier, which together forms an introduction to the whole sentence. The other part of the sentence is itself a standalone sentence. Examples are below: The gun fully loaded, we found it easy to pass the forest. Fog all over the place , they found it difficult to see anything. She found her pet dog in the middle of the yard, its feet wounded . All things considered , we found it acceptable to invest more this year. The italicized parts are absolute constructions. Absolute constructions are applied to the entire sentence, rather than only the subject or the object as a dangling modifier or participial phrase would be. This construction can also be used to conjoin two sentences. Example: Millions of copies of the novels by Salman Rushdie have been sold out. He is regarded to ...

In our recent post, we saw the differences between British and American spelling . The difference between British English (BrE) and American English (AmE) doesn't end only in the spelling. Entire words may be different; a word used in BrE may have an entirely different spelling and set of meanings in AmE, and some words with the same spelling can have entirely different meanings. For instance, there is no 'ground floor' in AmE, which means 'first floor' is the ground floor itself, and the floor above it is 'second floor', while the floor above the ground floor is called 'first floor' in BrE. Another example is 'bill'. In AmE, 'bill' is a banknote, while in BrE, 'bill' is an invoice of products and services offered. Here we have a table with several words in the British English and their corresponding American English words. The Table British English Word American English Counterpart Comments aerial antenna anywhere any...

I found that when writing and talking in numbers, people tend to make several mistakes. I thought it a good idea to dispel some myths in this post. Here are some examples of good use: Five of my friends are coming tomorrow. He is 14 years older than I am. The telephone number of John is two oh three oh two one two. "Wright brothers' flying machine was patented in nineteen oh six," the professor explained. Numbers in Written Form Don't begin a sentence with a number in figure form. Wrong: 20 candidates were selected to go for the trip. Correct: Thirty-three people in different academic levels were awarded. If the number is a digit (less than ten), always spell it out: I have three close friends. Two of my cousins are in the US. I gave out five of my books. If the number is above nine, then you can either spell it out or use figures. But when spelling out numbers up to ninety-nine, don't forget that hyphen. I wonder how she could run 20 kilom...

Americans have definitely revolutionized the way they spell; it makes me doubtful as to whether they are lazy, ignorant, or improvement-thirsty. They drop 'u' from 'colour', 'favourite', and 'honour'; 'e' from 'judgement'; and totally remodel words like 'plough', 'cheque', and 'encyclopaedia' to help their pronunciation. Which version do you think is appropriate? The original but difficult-to-spell British or the easy lazy American? Here Are a List of Words With Their American and British Spellings Separated British Spelling American Spelling aeroplane airplane aesthetics esthetics ageing aging aluminium aluminum analogue analog analyse analyze annexe annex archaeology archeology armour armor artefact artifact axe ax behaviour behavior catalogue catalog catalyse catalyze centre center cheque check colour color cosy cozy counselling counseling defence defense demagogue demagog dependant dependent dialogue dial...

Here are some sentences: If I got the first class, I would go and join a Medicine program. If I had worked hard, I could have got through in the examination. If I work hard, I will definitely pass this time. These examples show three different forms of conditional verbs. The first one is an improbable (unreal) condition, second, an impossible condition and the third, probable (real) condition. Now, we will see where to use which. Real (Probable Condition) This condition has a result happening in the future, based any present event. This is called real condition because there is every probability for it to happen. The first part of the condition (the condition status/if part) is usually expressed in the present simple form, and the result part is expressed in future simple. Examples: If Mark is home, I will pay him a visit. Joe will be here any moment, if the traffic is smooth. The systems will work just fine, if you follow my instructions. In some situations, the real...

Look at this sentence: Jim tried to carefully talk to his friends about the mishap, but he failed miserably. This sentence uses an awkward grammatical construction called a split infinitive—one in which the adverb (carefully) splits the infinitive (to talk). That sentence looks rather weird due to the use of it. Here other examples: Sarah, I have to firmly ask you to go out. The shower trickled as a first step to slowly run out. Why Should You Avoid It? You obviously wouldn't say: "I have to hard work to achieve my ambition", when you mean "I have to work hard to achieve my ambition". Here, the word 'hard' is the adverb modifying 'work'. Using a split infinitive in this case looks rather awkward. So definitely, you have to avoid split infinitives in your writing. Several grammarians today argue that split infinitives are no longer a mistake, or it is a myth that split infinitive is a mistake. But good writers should definitely avoid s...

You know pretty well about the subject-verb agreement. The plural subjects have to take plural verb form and singular, singular verb form. But I found that several writers make simple mistakes with certain nouns, containing such words as 'everyone', 'none of', 'everybody', 'all', 'some', 'each', 'every', etc. Here are the guidelines. These Words Are Singular The words that are regarded to be singular and take only singular verb include these: Every Each Any Everyone None Neither...Nor Either...Or Nobody Not any Nothing A little Examples: Each student has to be approved for participation. None of the students was approved. Neither Tom nor Brad is acting in this film. Everyone has to agree to the terms. A little water has to be found. Usage of Either...Or and Neither...Nor In Either...or and Neither...nor there is room for ample confusion among grammarians. If both nouns are singular, obviously the verb...

My reader, Monica Borden yesterday enquired through a comment: I've been a subscriber for just a few weeks, and have not taken the time to read through your archives. Would you know off the top of your head if you have a post or posts that address the use of "who vs. whom" and "She and I" and when you can use "me" instead of "I" when referring to oneself? I am also interested in knowing what words are improper to begin a sentence with. I see writers beginning sentences with: So... and my gut tells me you should not do that, is that correct? I will give clarifications on those aspects of grammar in this post. I Vs. Me I will address this first. As you said Monica, there is a post in the archives addressing this: Some English Errors to Avoid . By the way, Monica, you could have easily found this from archives, had you used the search feature. You can read in this post quite a few other grammar aspects as well. Who Vs. Whom This is alm...

At many places, I saw such sentence construction as in: He has always been smarter then me. I wanted it to be more black then red. The reticulated python is slightly longer then the Anaconda. At the place of ‘then’ in all these sentences, it should be ‘than’. Always, the comparative form uses ‘than’ not ‘then’. I thought I should address this as a separate post so that people may notice it and change. The Uses of Then The word then is used to refer to any point of time in the past or the future: Last year we got married. Then it was easy to find a home. Next year my friend gets married. Then I should be there as his best man. Other meanings of then are these: After something: We have to find Franky first, then John. Therefore/Thus: You said you have do it. Then why don’t you hurry? By the time that: By then you will have reached your home. But on the other hand: She was here, but then she can’t be there too. The Uses of Than Than comes mainly in comparative ...

A suffix is anything affixed at the end of a word, to form another type from it. There are several suffixes we will see now which form nouns: –ness, –ment, –ity, –tion, –ion, –sion, –ance, –ence . Here we will see some of them with explanations. All these suffixes are used with various adjectives or verbs to form their noun counterparts. Make a note that these words are not standalone. They have to couple with another word to get a meaning. –Ment This suffix forms nouns related to action, process, cause or effect of an action, etc. Though –ment usually forms noun form from verbs, occasionally adjectives can have this suffix, as in the last example below. Arrange—arrangement Refresh—refreshment Employ—employment Replace—replacement Merry—merriment –Ness This suffix is usually added to adjectives. However, it cannot be applied to every adjective. It usually indicates a state or quality. Happy—happiness Sad—sadness Dark—darkness Kind—kindness Weak—weakness The word...