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There is a significant difference between discrete and discreet. Discrete means separate, like the individual frames that make up a movie. Discreet means unobtrusive, blending in and not standing out; it is sometimes used to mean secretive but that is not quite accurate. A discreet person is one who does not reveal too much about
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
Disinterested or uninterested? There was a furore late in 2022 when an ABC journalist used uninterested when she meant disinterested. While many people use the words interchangeably, they do mean quite different things. Disinterested means impartial, even-handed, being fair to all involved. A disinterested person – like a judge or a sports umpire – may
Site A site is any location. The word site is both a noun (a site) and a verb (to be placed somewhere): There was a lot of activity at the building site. The new housing estate is sited close to transport. A site can be plain and ordinary, even unattractive, like a dump site, or
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
We’ve now finished our look at adverbs and move to a new part of speech, conjunctions. But before we continue, let’s just look back at what we’ve covered so far. We’ve looked at nouns, which can be thought of as containers of meaning, and pronouns, which substitute for nouns so that we don’t always have
I know – it’s not really the first Monday of the month, but it is Cup Eve, so my annual horse-themed commonly confused words, and my Cup tips, come to you today. These commonly confused words are actually quite straightforward to remember: chomping means to eat (as it does for humans). Champing at the bit
An unrecognised function of adverbs: sentence adverbs Consider this paragraph, and the meaning of the adverbs used in it (I have used bold to show both the adverbs and verbs). It is exam time again. Happily, most students are prepared. Sadly, some students will underperform. Unfortunately, they think their results determines their entire future. Thankfully,
While other parts of speech have rules governing where they are placed – for example, verbs need to be the first or second element in a sentence – adverbs can float around quite happily. Often we use them at the start (as you can see where the adverb often is used in this sentence) to