The English language is constantly changing. New words are created and old words fall into disuse. Australians start to speak and write differently from Canadians; New Zealanders use the language differently from Singaporeans. And to cope with these changes, grammar rules themselves change. For speakers of some other languages, the fact that the ‘rules’ of
‘You and me – and me and you’ sang The Turtles way back in 1967, as they knocked the Beatles’ ‘Penny Lane’ off the no. 1 spot on the US charts with ‘Happy Together’. But which should it be? Unusually for grammar, the answer is: it doesn’t matter! It simply depends what you wish to
To start with, let’s remember what reflexive pronouns are. They are what I dubbed the ‘selfie’ pronouns: myself, ourselves, yourself, yourselves, himself, herself, itself, themselves and – a bit controversially – themself (for more on this particular pronoun, see the post on gender-neutral pronouns). We use them when we want to refer back to the
Use ‘who’ and ‘whom’ for people (and for words that describe people) This seems obvious but more and more writers are using that as the relative pronoun to describe people. I have two theories why this happening: partly because people are worried about misusing either who or whom and look for another word to use
Does the difference between ‘who’ and ‘whom’ really matter? No man is an island, entire of itself: every man … is a part of the main … any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in all mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. John
Relative pronouns We use relative pronouns – that, which, who and whom – to join sentences, which refer to the same noun, together. (In this post, I’ll look at the difference between that and which, and next week I’ll look at who and whom.) For example: We use relative pronouns to join sentences together. The
Pronouns provide a quick, convenient way to refer to an earlier noun without repeating it (as it does in this sentence). But there is one problem: what pronoun can we use for a single person when we don’t know the person’s sex, given that pronouns indicate sex? For example, consider this sentence: The child paddles
There are a couple of ‘rules’ about pronouns: a pronoun must always follow its antecedent, and agree with it in number. Like so many things in grammar, there are some occasions when it is fine, even necessary, to break the rule but, on the whole, it is a good rule to follow and will generally
Pronouns: a substitute for nouns In life, we often find it handy to use substitutes. In sport, the use of substitute players is not just a useful back-up but often a strategic move. Pronouns are the substitute players of the language world, and they substitute for nouns. They are not a subcategory of nouns; they
Welcome to Apostrophes, Etc. In my first post, I thought I’d tackle one of the most common questions about apostrophes. It’s is always an abbreviation for it is or it has, in the same way that he’s is an abbreviation for he is or he has. It’s, despite having an apostrophe, has nothing to do