That is grammar up with which I will not put Winston Churchill never said or wrote these words, which are frequently attributed to him (but since we are only a couple of weeks past the anniversary of Victory in Europe, why not have a photo of the inspirational wartime leader?). The joke quote seems to
It’s actually very simple: there are some pronouns that we use after prepositions, and some that we don’t. In technical terms, prepositions have an object, and we use the dative form of pronouns to show this. Now, since I won’t be explaining either objects or dative forms for a while yet, this may not make
It’s simple. If you are trying to choose whether to use but or however, choose the bold but over the weak, wimpy however – every single time. If I could choose just one topic in grammar where I could way a magic wand and have my way, it is this: the issue of using but
Subordinating conjunctions: what they do and how they differ from coordinating conjunctions In my post on coordinating conjunctions, I explained how that group of conjunctions joins shorter sentences together in a way that balances the two original sentences, leaving them of equal importance in the new sentence. Subordinating conjunctions also join shorter sentences into longer
Coordinating conjunctions What do coordinating conjunctions do? Conjunctions, as a group, are like road junctions: they are where sentences join. Coordinating conjunctions, one of the two categories of conjunctions, resemble an intersection with a roundabout; they join the roads in a way where all roads are equal. No way in or out of the roundabout
Conjunctive adverbs are one of the new categories of adverbs created by modern grammarians. Most of these words fit into the traditional grammar categories of adverbs of reason or degree. The recognition of conjunctive adverbs is the main reason I disagree with modern grammar! In modern grammar, conjunctive adverbs, sometimes called sentence connectors by other
It seems quite simple: we use a full stop to end a sentence and a question mark to end a question. But sometimes it can be a bit tricky working out whether we are dealing with a question or statement. One category where writers often become confused is with indirect speech. If the sentence is
The elegant and under-appreciated semicolon has just two uses: instead of a comma, it separates long items in a list (but not in dot-point lists); it also can be used in place of (not as well as) and or but to join together two short sentences into a longer sentence. (In technical terms, a semicolon
In a word: yes. But there is a qualification: you shouldn’t do this too often. The reason is nothing to do with the words and and but themselves but with the group of words they grammatically belong to (coordinating conjunctions). As the name conjunctions suggests, the role of these words is to connect things and