Tag Archives: Emphasis

Pronouns: reflexive pronoun use and Microsoft Word’s grammar checker

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

Read More

Verbs: do – the emphatic, questioning and negative auxiliary

Do: the neglected third auxiliary verb In special situations, including where we want to give our verb extra strength or emphasis, we use a third auxiliary verb to power our sentences: the verb to do Verbs are often defined as doing, being and having words, as I discussed in an earlier post. While the special

Read More