Tag Archives: grammar
Let me introduce the ‘zero conditional’ in English. Posted by Gabriele on Sep 4, 2014
Some of you may already be familiar with this grammatical construction, but for those who are not, I want to introduce to you, the zero conditional. A zero conditional grammatical construction is used in sentences, when the time is now (or always) and the situation is real (or possible). Zero conditional sentences are used to…
Opposites in English Posted by heather on Mar 7, 2012
Some Opposites by Richard Wilbur What is the opposite of riot? It is lots of people keeping quiet. The opposite of doughnut? Wait A minute while I meditate This isn’t easy. Ah! I’ve found it. It’s a cookie with a hole around it. What is the opposite of two? A lonely me,a lonely you. The…
It’s or Its? Posted by heather on Feb 18, 2012
If you spend a decent amount of time on Facebook, then you may have seen some of the posts about grammar that tend to make the rounds. Often these posts are sentences that highlight a regularly misused or misunderstood word, punctuation mark or grammar rule. For example, “Let’s eat Grandpa! vs Let’s eat, Grandpa! (Commas, they save…
Statements and Questions Posted by heather on Feb 11, 2012
Statements can be changed into questions. When we convert a statement into a question, we have to make some changes. One way of doing this is to change the word order by putting the verb at the beginning of the sentence and then adding a question mark at the end, like this: “He is interested…
Getting to Grips with Homographs Posted by heather on Jan 14, 2012
Last week we had a look at homophones. As a quick reminder, a homophone is a word that sounds the same as another word but has a different meaning and sometimes a different spelling. Today we are going to take a look at homographs. A homograph is a word that has the same spelling as…
Understanding Homophones Posted by heather on Jan 7, 2012
One of the confusing things about English is the number of words that sound the same but have totally different meanings. There and their; aloud and allowed; and sew and so, are just three examples that cause some confusion. In English, we call these words “homophones.” A homophone is a word that sounds the same…