Emma Stewart Writes

Writer, Proofreader, Editor and Cat Lady

Category: Grammar and Punctuation

Posts covering grammar rules and punctuation.

Respect the Humble Comma

May 6, 2024 /

The Comma is Important

Commas are important punctuation marks. If nothing else, they let you breathe! Commas are a short pause in a sentence, compared to a full stop or period. The comma is essential in writing but often misused. So let’s look at some of the rules about comma usage.

Lists and the ‘Oxford Comma’

Writing a list of more than three items in a sentence? Commas are used to separate the items. The final two items have ‘and’ or ‘or’ between them. A lot of publications will not use a comma after the ‘and’ or ‘or’. This is the “Oxford Comma”.

The Oxford comma,or serial comma, gives clarity. It is sometimes controversial, but there are definitely cases where not using it will cause confusion for the reader. See the example below:

“The milkshake flavours are banana, strawberry, chocolate, cookies and cream and vanilla.”

“The milkshake flavours are banana, strawberry, chocolate, cookies and cream, and vanilla.”

See the difference? It’s subtle, and most people would figure out that it is “cookies and cream” and not two separate flavours called “cookies” and “cream”. It is confusing, especially if your writing is being read by someone whose first language isn’t English.

Commas are used to separate two adjectives in a sentence, but only if the order of the adjectives can be switched and still make sense. The trick is if you put “and” in between the adjectives and it still makes sense, then use a comma.

The Dreaded Comma Splice

The comma splice occurs when two independent clauses are joined by a comma, when they really should be separate sentences using a full stop. This can lead to a run-on sentence. Here’s an example.

“She opened the fridge, her phone started to ring.”

The two clauses are not related to each other. So, you can rewrite it as two separate sentences.

“She opened the fridge. Her phone started to ring.”

Or you can use a connecting word to join the clauses together and use a comma at the end of the first clause.

“She opened the fridge, but her phone started to ring.”

As a rule, if the subject isn’t used in front of a second verb, you don’t need a comma. You might need it for clarity if there is ambiguity about who is performing the second verb. You may need a comma before the word “because” for the same kind of reason.

An introductory phrase or dependent clause needs a comma after it. Such as this example:

“If you don’t know, I can’t help you.”

Asides and Extra Information

Adding an aside to a sentence with extra but not essential information, requires the use of commas. A comma comes before the aside, and one after it. This is an appositive comma.

“Elaine, my girlfriend, has been there twice.”

It is especially important if the subject is clearly identified already, because the additional description isn’t essential. Avoid ambiguity where you can. See these two examples:

“My girlfriend Elaine has been there.”

“My girlfriend, Elaine, has been there.”

The first example suggests the speaker has more than one girlfriend and is specifying which one he is talking about. The second example indicates that the speaker only has one girlfriend so her name is additional information. This rule is often misused and can lead to confusion.

Other Comma Uses

Commas are used around words that introduce a sentence or expressions that interrupt the flow of the sentence. Things like “Well,” or “No,” at the beginning of a sentence. Same thing if you have a phrase like “by the way” or “however”.

Writing dialogue is a big one for comma usage. I’ll cover that in more detail in the future as I’d like to do a series on writing dialogue properly. But introducing direct quotes requires a comma before the opening speech mark. For dialogue tags after the quotation, the comma comes at the end of the last word of the quote.

Commas need to be used to separate a statement from a contrasting statement in a sentence, or a statement combined with a question. You would also use it before and after something like ‘e.g.’ or ‘etc.’

Don’t Underestimate the Importance

Commas are an essential punctuation, important for preventing confusion in writing. A well-known example is this sentence: “Let’s eat grandma.” Oof, cannibalism is rather frowned upon these days. “Let’s eat, grandma.” Much better. If you want proof of how important a comma is to the meaning of a sentence, try this one on for size.

“A woman without her man is nothing.”

Where do you think you could put a comma and how would it affect this sentence?

“A woman, without her man, is nothing.”

“A woman, without her, man is nothing.”

The first version suggests that a woman is nothing unless she has a man. The second suggests that a man is nothing without a woman. So comma placement really does matter if you want your reader to get the right meaning for a sentence. 

Thanks for reading, I hope this has been helpful. For more details and rules about commas, check the Blue Book of Grammar section here. It even has a quiz to check your knowledge. For more writing content, subscribe to my blog. I cover writing, proofreading and editing subjects, as well as analysing stories in various media. I also have a YouTube channel where I play video games and discuss the stories, lore and world-building. For more punctuation rules in dialogue, see this post.

Punctuating and Formatting Dialogue

August 18, 2023 / / 0 Comments

How To Format Dialogue

You’ll remember that before we talked about breaking the rules of grammar within dialogue. That’s totally okay to do but when it comes to how we format and punctuate the dialogue itself within the text, there are important rules that must be followed. This is essential for making sure your dialogue is easy to read and follow. You don’t want your readers getting confused on who is saying what. So here’s the rules and tips for formatting and punctuating your dialogue.

Paragraphing

When writing dialogue, it is essential that the dialogue starts in a new paragraph. Even if it is just one or two words. After that, each new speaker gets a new paragraph. This applies whether you have two speakers or ten. So for a conversation between three characters, let’s call them Dave, Steve and Karen, you would format it like this.

Dave

Steve

Karen

Steve

Karen

Dave

This way it is clear that a different person is speaking for each line of dialogue. This also means you can reduce the use of dialogue tags a bit.

If a character is saying a lot at once, a longer monologue, you may choose to break it up into paragraphs. In this case, you should open each paragraph with quotation marks but only the end of the dialogue on the last paragraph should have closing quotation marks. This makes it clear that the preceding paragraphs are part of the same dialogue.

Quotation Marks

Direct dialogue must be enclosed in quotation marks. The general convention is to use double quotation marks – ” – these ones. Although in UK English it is also correct to use single quotation marks – ‘ – for direct dialogue. Either method is correct, but whichever one you use, make sure you’re consistent with it throughout the text.

For quotes within dialogue, these should be enclosed in quotation marks that are different from the ones you use for dialogue. So if your dialogue is contained within double quotation marks, you should use single quotation marks for quotes within dialogue, and vice versa.

“He literally said, ‘That’s not what’s going on.’ That’s what he said to me.”

or

‘He literally said, “That’s not what’s going on.” That’s what he said to me.’

Commas

When introducing dialogue, you should use a comma before the opening quotation marks. If you are ending the sentence containing the dialogue with a dialogue tag, the comma goes at the end of the dialogue before the closing quotation marks.

Steve said, “It wasn’t me.”

“It wasn’t me,” Steve said.

Remember that dialogue tags are part of the sentence. If the word after the closing quotation mark is not a proper noun, it does not need to be capitalised. Even if you end the dialogue with a question mark or exclamation mark. If you are not adding a dialogue tag at the end after the closing quotation mark, then the dialogue should end with a full stop (period) not a comma. Unless it is a question or requires an exclamation mark. You can see this in the above examples.

Interruptions and Trailing Off

During natural conversations, people will trail off or interrupt each other. That’s normal, especially during conversations that are emotionally charged. How can you show this in written dialogue, especially when you need a new line for a new person speaking? Two pieces of punctuation can help with this.

For interruptions, the best thing is a dash. Not just any dash, the em-dash. The em-dash is called this because it is the longest dash, the width of a capital M. They’re not easy to find on most keyboards, because they should be used sparingly.

They look like this: —

The keyboard shortcut is ctrl + alt + dash key. There may be different ones on different software programs.

“So, then I—“

“Hey! You better come quick!”

For trailing off, where the speaker stops speaking because they’ve realised something or lost their train of thought, you need the ellipsis. The infamous triple dots…

Depending on the style guide you use, there may or may not be spaces between the dots. The Chicago Manual of Style uses spaces between the dots . . .

Ellipses should be used only where necessary. It’s not uncommon for them to be overused. That gets tedious to read very quickly, and if they’re used too much, they lose their impact very quickly.

Conclusion

So that’s how to format and punctuate your dialogue. I hope you find it helpful. Go forth and write your dialogue effectively! Thank you for reading. Next week I’m going to start with some writing analysis posts, taking a look at some of the themes and subjects covered by pop-culture and examining how the writing explores these themes. Starting with one of my favourite TV shows of all time, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and the spin-off, Angel. I’m also planning to challenge myself a bit with writing some short stories and flash fiction to get the creative juices going as I work on my novel.

If you want to be notified when the next post goes live, subscribe below. Follow me on my social media links for updates and behind the scenes ongoings. As always, I’m available for proofreading and editing work, so if you want to chat about working with me, get in touch here.

Essentials of Writing Dialogue

August 16, 2023 / / 0 Comments

When you’re writing fiction, dialogue is an essential part of it. It is also an area that a lot of writers will struggle with. Often the dialogue is written too correctly, or there’s just simply too much of it. Writers can be prone to excessive adjectives, trying to avoid using ‘said’ too much and overcompensating. Dialogue is a common place for punctuation mistakes as well. So, without further ado, here is the essentials of writing dialogue.

Breaking the rules of grammar

Obviously you want to show you know the rules of grammar. Mistakes make you look unprofessional. However, when it comes to writing dialogue, it’s okay to break the rules of grammar. In fact, I encourage it. Why? Because people don’t talk with perfect grammar. At least, most people don’t. People speak in sentence fragments, use contractions, use slang and may hesitate or repeat themselves. Take these two examples.

“Hey, what’s that?”

“I dunno. Found it over there.”

Versus

“Excuse me. What is that you have there?”

“I do not know. I found it over there.”

See the difference? Some people might speak very formally, but the second version sounds a lot less natural and most people aren’t going to speak like that. Someone who does speak with perfect grammar and formality, is usually someone who is highly educated, extremely arrogant or not used to talking to people. If in doubt, read or listen to it out loud, and if it doesn’t sound ‘normal’, it needs changing.

Dialogue Should Serve a Purpose

Is there such a thing as too much dialogue? Yes, absolutely. If there is nothing but dialogue, a lot of the story becomes lost. You need action, you need description and depending on the POV you need internal dialogue as well. Dialogue should have a purpose in the story, whether it is exposition, character or relationship development, plot development or showing emotions and reactions to what happens in the plotline.

A lot of editors will cut back dialogue if it does not serve a purpose to the story. Even if in the real world, you would have small talk and introductions and things, if it’s not helping move the story along, some of it probably isn’t necessary. Even if you’re writing a phone conversation, you can gloss over the “Hi, how are you, how are the kids,” kind of stuff if it’s not important. You can use indirect dialogue to summarise or even just leave it out and get to the point of the conversation. If there isn’t a point, then that dialogue is probably unnecessary and you could cover it by simply saying something like: X spent twenty minutes on the phone to their sister.

Indirect Dialogue

Nice segue into indirect dialogue and when it should be used. You want to avoid repetition. If a major event happened, then one of your characters is telling someone else about it, you don’t need to write out every word they say. Your reader will get bored reading a blow by blow account when they just read a blow by blow account.

Instead, summarise using indirect dialogue. “X explained what had just happened the night before.” Then, you can get into how the character receiving the explanation responds to the news instead, which will be more interesting. It also helps you avoid writing out excessive small talk.

Dialogue Tags

He said, she said, they said. A lot of writers feel they have to avoid using ‘said’ as much as possible. It comes from trying to sound original and trying to avoid repetition, but the problem is they then start digging deep into a thesaurus looking for alternatives.

This may not sound like a problem, but if the dialogue tags are extremely colourful and varied, it reduces the impact of the content of the dialogue. It distracts the reader from what’s actually being said. A lot of the time, what you can do is use ‘said’ and use description of body language and action to show people’s emotions, or even just the words the character uses. Having the odd interesting tag can put more emphasis on important pieces of dialogue and improve the impact.

Don’t forget that if there are only two people involved in the conversation, not every line of dialogue even needs a tag. As long as you remember to put each person’s lines in a new paragraph, after a couple of lines, you can drop the tags altogether, only adding them when needed to clarify who is speaking or for emphasis. For an example, here’s an excerpt from my current WIP novel demonstrating this.

Shaine nodded, shivering a bit. “It’s gotten quite cold in here,” she said.

“Mm. We can’t start a fire, the smoke could be suffocating in such a small space,” Alonso said.

“No, we can’t. Maybe… I can’t believe I’m saying this, but maybe we should put our bedrolls together. For warmth.”

“Oh? That would work,” Alonso said.

“To sleep.”

“Yes, I know what you meant, Shaine. I’ll be a perfect gentleman, I promise.”

Shaine smiled warmly. “I know. I trust you, Alonso. I’m so glad I’m not doing this alone,” she said.

1st draft Buried secrets excerpt – by emma stewart

Conclusion

So, that’s the essentials of writing dialogue. I hope you found it helpful. It was fun getting to share a little excerpt from my first draft as well. The further I get in writing it, the more excited I am to be able to share it with the world. I’ll leave things off here and on Friday we’ll pick it up again and talk about how to format and punctuate dialogue properly.

If you want to read more, there’s plenty of previous blog posts that you might find interesting. I’ve added a directory page to separate the posts by type and I will be reworking the categories and tags to make it easier to navigate and find what you’re interested in. Remember, you can find me on Facebook, Instagram and Tiktok as well. If you want to get updated every time a new post goes live, you can subscribe below. Until next time!

Understanding Verbs Part 3

August 11, 2023 / / 0 Comments

Part 3 Of Understanding Verbs

In the first part we discussed verbs, what they are and the different kinds of verbs you might come across. In part 2 we covered the different tenses and forms of verbs., In this part we are going to cover the use of verbs within the sentence. Subject-verb agreement is essential for clear writing. If the verb and subject are not in agreement, the sentence can sound awkward and the meaning could be confused. We’ll also touch on split infinitives and implied subjects.

Subject-Verb Agreement

What does this actually mean? Essentially, the form of the verb used must match the subject of the sentence. Remember, the subject is what is doing the action of the verb. So a singular subject requires a singular verb, and a plural subject requires a plural verb.

“The dog is in the kennel.”

So above, the subject ‘the dog’ is singular, so we use the singular form of the verb ‘is’. If we said: “The dogs are in the kennels.” There is more than one dog so we need to use the plural form ‘are’. “The dogs is in the kennels.” would be incorrect, and it sounds awkward when you read it aloud.

That brings me to a good way to tell whether your subject and verb are in agreement. Reading aloud is a great way to check your writing makes sense and is correct. It’s easier to tell if you have the correct words and word order, by hearing it out loud. You can read it out loud, record yourself reading it out loud or even use software to read it aloud for you.

Exceptions and Rules

As with all good English rules, there are exceptions. Using the first person pronoun ‘I’ means you need to use the plural form of the verb. If the verb is following up a main verb, in some cases you use the basic form of the verb. “He helped the old lady cross the road.” ‘Helped’ is the main verb so the secondary verb ‘cross’ is used in its main form.

There are a few additional rules for certain circumstances. Detailed explanations and examples can be found here. The Blue Book of Grammar is a great resource for English grammar, with good explanations and there are quizzes too, so you can test your knowledge. A lot of people might say that this is intuitive, and it is to a native English speaker, however, mistakes are common and if you know the rules, then you’ll be able to apply them properly in all situations. Especially if you plan to be a proofreader or editor.

Rules for Subject-Verb Agreement

In a sentence with the word ‘of’ the subject will typically be before the phrase ‘of…’ and thus it is this part that must agree with the verb. Take the following pair of sentences for example:

“A bunch of colourful flowers bring cheer to any room in the house.”

“A bunch of colourful flowers brings cheer to any rom in the house.”

Can you work out which one is correct? Try reading them out loud, and try to identify what part of the sentence is the subject, and what the relevant verb is.

Did you think the second sentence is correct? You’d be right! The subject is the ‘bunch’. the flowers are a secondary noun, and the verb is ‘brings’.

If you have two singular subjects connected by ‘either/or’ or ‘neither/nor’ requires a singular verb. If you have a singular and a plural subject in a sentence like this, the verb agrees with the noun or pronoun nearest to it. Caution is advised, as some sentences can end up awkward, even if they are grammatically correct. In this case, rewording the sentence might be the way to go.

If you have two or more singular subjects connected by the word ‘and’, you will usually use a plural verb. Be careful, some nouns connected by ‘and’ become compound nouns and should be treated singularly, such as ‘breaking and entering’. It is often considered to be incorrect to place a personal pronoun first in a list of pronouns/nouns but grammatically, it is not. It is more a convention of politeness.

Phrases separating the subject and verb such as ‘besides, along with, as well as, not’ are not part of the subject and should be ignored, so the verb matches the subject. The same applies to anything in parentheses (brackets).

Prepositions and Amounts

Sentences that begin with ‘there’ or ‘here’, the true subject is after the verb so the verb should match the subject. “There are the keys,” or “There is the key.” Singular verbs should also be used for distances, time periods or sums of money, when considered a single unit. “Ten years is too long.” But if you are talking about money like hundreds of dollar bills, then it becomes plural.

Finally for portions of something, phrases like ‘some of, a lot of, the majority of’, the opposite of the first rule applies. The verb should agree with the noun after the word ‘of’. “Most of the cake is gone.” vs “Most of the cakes are gone.” With collective nouns, it can be subject to the writer’s intent but the phrasing of the noun might need to be changed to make it easier or clearer.

Finally, if the phrases is expressing a wish or something that is contrary to fact, ‘was’ is replaced with ‘were’. “If your father were here, he would stop you.” Normally, ‘were’ is a plural verb but in this case it’s expressing a wish that is not factually true. This is called the subjunctive mood, a hypothetical or wishful thought, or a request. “I wish you were here.” In this case you pair a singular subject with a plural verb. Make sense? Hopefully I’ve made it a bit clearer. English rules are full of odd exceptions.

Split Infinitives

Infinitive verbs are verbs that are used with the word ‘to’ before them and are not the main verb of the sentence. “He is going to pay.” ‘Going’ is the main verb and ‘to pay’ is the infinitive. A split infinitive is where a word is inserted between ‘to’ and the verb, often an adverb. “He is going to grudgingly pay.”

It is a held belief that you should never use a split infinitive, however, technically speaking it is not wrong. However, they can be awkward and clumsy, so they are usually not necessary and most experienced writers won’t use them unless it is necessary. You might find that there are other ways to word the sentence that read less awkwardly.

Implied Subjects

There are certain situations where the subject is not included in the sentence and is considered implied. This is usually when the sentence is a request or a command of some kind. “Stop right there!” or “Please bring me fresh towels.” Both of these have the implied subject of ‘you’ so it is not considered necessary to state the pronoun. It is assumed that the subject is ‘you’ and the context is enough.

This is not as common in English, but is much more common in other languages, such as Japanese. In Japanese, for example, pronouns are dropped and implied all the time. While pronouns for ‘you’ and ‘i/me’ do exist in the language, it is generally assumed from the context that the listener knows who the subject is so it is not stated unless needed for clarity. Indeed, it is often considered quite rude to say ‘you’ in Japanese. It also means that it is not uncommon for a single verb to be a complete sentence. If you said “Eating.” in English, it would sound quite weird, without saying “I’m eating.”

Conclusion

That concludes our foray into understanding verbs and tenses. I hope this has been helpful and interesting. If you missed part 1 and 2 you can find them here and here.

I’d love to hear any thoughts or questions. In the mean time, happy writing! Don’t forget to subscribe for updates on new blog posts three times a weekend come find me son social media for more updates. Next week we’re going to look at some myths about writing and some ‘rules’ that you should break.

Understanding Verbs Part 2: The Irregular, Helper and Reflexive Verbs

August 9, 2023 / / 0 Comments

Part 2 of Understanding Verbs

Welcome back to understanding verbs. This is part two, where we will be covering irregular verbs, reflexive verbs, linking verbs and helping verbs. There are a lot of different kinds of verbs. So hopefully I can make this more straightforward to understand. Last time, we covered what verbs are, how to understand conjugation and tenses and how regular verbs work. Regular verbs follow a regular pattern, hence the name! Irregular verbs, as you can probably tell, do not.

Understanding Irregular Verbs

How many irregular verbs are there in English? Quite a lot! There’s around 200 of them. If you remember in the last part, we compared this to Japanese, a language I’m studying for fun, and found that in Japanese, there are only two irregular verbs. So, I’m not going to cover every single one here, but we’ll look at a few of the most common ones you’ll come across.

With regular verbs, we saw that there’s a consistent pattern in how we conjugate these verbs for different tenses. With irregular verbs, there’s no pattern and the word can change drastically when we conjugate it for different tenses. This is where there can be difficulty in knowing which word we should be using.

So let’s look at a couple of examples:

To know:

The past tense of to know is ‘knew’, the past progressive tense is ‘was/were known’, the past perfect tense is ‘had known’ and the past progressive perfect tense is ‘had been knowing’. The present tense is ‘know’. The present progressive is: ‘I am knowing’, ‘he/she/it is knowing’ or ‘you/we/they are knowing’. Present perfect tense is ‘has/have known’.

So you can see from this that the word can change a lot depending on the tense you are using. The verb ‘to find’ can change to ‘found’ or ‘finding’ depending on the tense. The verb ‘to think’ can become ‘thinks’, ‘thought’ or ‘thinking’. It’s not intuitive, and unfortunately there’s not really a shortcut to remember these, you just have to learn them. For more, see the Blue Book of Grammar here.

You might have noticed something else, in the above example for ‘to know’ and that is the various forms of the verb ‘to be’ used in the verb phrases. That leads us into the next section nicely, helping verbs.

Helping Verbs

We’ve used helping verbs in a lot of the examples already, as one of the things they help with is expressing the tense of a verb. They are used to form the progressive, perfect and progressive perfect tenses, and the verb ‘to be’ is the most commonly used one. So can you list the 8 forms of the verb ‘to be’? See below for the answers.

Click here to see them.

be, is, are, am, was, were, being, been

Did you get them all? Do you know when to use each form? Let’s do a conjugation table to show you them, then we’ll discuss the uses of it in more detail. Remember that ‘being’ is the present participle and ‘been’ is the past participle.

PersonPastPresentFuture
Iwasamwill be
He/She/Itwasiswill be
Youwerearewill be
Wewerearewill be
You (pl)werearewill be
Theywerearewill be
Basic conjugation table for ‘to be’
Main verb vs Helping verb

‘To be’ is a verb that can be used on its own such as “It is there.” It is also used alongside other verbs to help indicate tense. “I am going to the party.” In this example, the main verb is ‘going’ and ‘am’ is there to help the main verb ‘to go’. “She was leaving work.” In this one, ‘was’ is helping the main verb ‘to leave’ and indicates that this is past tense. “She is leaving work.” Present tense. Does that make sense? These helping verbs also have an impact when we look at using the passive voice, which was covered in a previous blog post here.

Linking Verbs

Guess what? ‘To be’ is also a linking verb! There’s a reason it’s the most commonly used verb in the English language. It’s so versatile! So, what do we mean by linking verb. Essentially, it’s a verb that links a noun to an adjective. “The ball is blue.” The noun is the ball, blue is the adjective, and the linking verb ‘is’ is basically telling us that the adjective is describing the state of the noun’s existence. You can use a form of ‘be’ to link a noun to adjectives, adverbs and adverbial phrases.

There are a few other common linking verbs, such as ‘become’, ‘seem’, ‘feel’, ‘taste’. Note that most of them indicate something to do with our senses, which makes sense given you are linking adjectives.

Reflexive Verbs

Reflexive verbs are verbs used when the subject and object of a sentence are the same thing. Similar to when we talked about reflexive pronouns, reflexive verbs work in a similar way and are always used with reflexive pronouns. “The cat grooms itself.”

The use of reflexive pronouns and reflexive verbs is often used for emphasis and can come with certain connotations. Take a look at these three sentences, which all say the same thing in essence, and see if you feel differently about them.

  • I cleaned the house.
  • I cleaned the house myself.
  • I cleaned the house all by myself.

The basic meaning of all of them is the same. The subject ‘I’ performed a verb ‘to clean’ on the object ‘the house’. The addition of a reflexive pronoun does imply more feeling. It’s stating that the subject performed this alone, and depending on how you read it, it could indicate the person’s feelings on the matter. You could get a sense of pride, that they completed the task on their own, or you could read it in a bitter tone.

The third sentence can have the same, but with a bit more emphasis on the fact that they did the task alone, and perhaps are unhappy that they were left to do this without help. Or extremely proud that they achieved it on their own for the first time. The context will give an indication of which kind of tone is implied, but you can see how using reflexive verbs and pronouns can change the meaning of a sentence and change the feeling, or ‘mood’ of what you write.

Conclusion

So we’ve covered quite a bit today, although there is plenty more to read on this subject. On Friday, part 3 will cover subject-verb agreement, split infinitives and implied subjects. If you missed the first part, you can read it here. If you have any thoughts or questions, feel free to comment. I’ve got a few interesting things in the works and I will soon be sharing updates on my novel, where I’ve been doing a lot of world building.

Follow me on social media for more content and subscribe to the blog below to get an email whenever a new post goes live! See you next time!

How to Understand Verb Tenses

August 7, 2023 / / 0 Comments

Verb Tenses – Conjugation

How to understand verb tenses and verb conjugation. I know, I know. The word ‘conjugation’ brings up memories from school, especially if you ever studied a language other than your native language. I remember memorising verb conjugations in French in high school. I don’t remember any of the verb conjugations from French, however. Clearly that was a waste of time, but the thing is, I didn’t really like French. I didn’t have much choice in languages, as the last Latin teacher retired before I chose my subjects. Latin would have been much more useful for my career aspirations as a vet, since a lot of medical terminology and species names are derived from Latin and Greek.

The thing is, I don’t really remember being formally taught how to conjugate English verbs in the same fashion. That’s something that I learned organically through learning to read and write, rather than memorising lists. That’s why it stays with me, perhaps. Or maybe it’s just because English is my native language so I understand it intuitively, and incorrect grammar just sounds ‘off’ to me.

I’ve been learning Japanese, as a hobby really, and I definitely feel I’m better at understanding verb conjugation in that language than I ever have in French. It might be because Japanese is such a different language, the grammar rules are vastly different from English. In Japanese, the verb always goes at the end of a sentence. With English it usually follows the subject. Spoken Japanese verbs have different conjugations for politeness levels, while in English, that’s not really a thing.

Understanding Verbs and Sentence Structure

So, on to the meat and bones of this article. Understanding verb tenses and how to conjugate verbs correctly will make a massive difference to your writing. This applies to all kinds of writing, whether it is an academic paper, a story or a blog article like this one. Why? Because of things like subject-verb agreement and syntax, the order of words in a sentence.

A basic sentence consists of a subject and what is said about the subject, sometimes referred to as the ‘predicate’. This is where the verb will be. Usually there will be an object as well, which is receiving the verb from the subject. Some verbs don’t need a direct object to make sense, these are known as ‘intransitive’ verbs. Verbs that do require a direct object are called ‘transitive’ verbs.

So let’s look at some examples. To make things clear, the subject will be underlined, the verb will be in bold and the direct object will be in italics.

  • The cat licked its paw.
  • Licked its paw.
  • The cat licked.

So in the list above, it’s clear that only the first sentence is complete. It makes sense. We know that the subject (the cat) licked (verb) its paw (object). The second sentence is lacking a subject, so we don’t know what performed the verb. The third sentence is lacking a direct object, so we don’t know what the cat licked. Licked is a transitive verb, we need a subject and an object with it for it to have any meaning.

This might seem really simple, but it’s important. Writing is about communicating, and if there is anything unclear, then it’s not communicating properly. When you use more complex sentences than these examples, it’s even more important.

Verb Tenses

Verb tenses are an important part of English language. At a basic level, you can split them into past, present and future. That obviously tells us when the action of the verb occurs. You also split the verb forms by first, second or third person, and within these there are singular and plural forms. English has regular and irregular verbs, like most other languages.

What’s the difference? Regular verbs follow a consistent pattern when conjugating the different forms of a verb, essentially the word is changed the same way for each form. Irregular verbs do not follow this pattern and often are changed significantly or even entirely. English has a lot of irregular verbs, while Japanese (my go to as it’s a language I’m studying) only has two irregular verbs: the verbs for ‘to do’ and ‘to come’.

For regular verbs, you take the base form (or stem) and use it as the present tense. To change the verb into other forms, you add a suffix. For example in the past tense you will usually add -ed or -d (if the word ends in an e). For some tenses you may need additional helper verbs to make it clear. The best way to show you is a list. So let’s take the verb ‘play’. The base form, known as the infinitive, is the word ‘to’ and the base form of the verb.

Regular Verb Conjugation: To Play

  • Infinitive: to play
  • First person singular: I play
  • First person plural: We play
  • Second person singular: You play
  • Second person plural: You play
  • Third person singular: He/She/It plays
  • Third person plural: They* play
  • Simple present: I play
  • Simple past: I played
  • Simple future: I will play
  • Present continuous: I am playing
  • Past continuous: I was playing
  • Future continuous: I will be playing
  • Present perfect: I have played
  • Past Perfect: I had played
  • Future perfect: I will have played
  • Present perfect continuous: I have been playing
  • Past perfect continuous: I had been playing
  • Future perfect continuous: I will have been playing

As you can see, some of these require linking words or helping verbs to make sense. This is the pattern used for regular verbs. English does not have imperfect verb conjugation. Instead, you should add the phrase ‘used to’ for something that occurred in the past but no longer occurs in the past or present. “I used to play video games when I was younger,” implies that you did play in the past but you stopped in the more recent past and no longer do it now.

* Note: as discussed previously, ‘they’ is also a singular pronoun for people of unknown or unspecified gender. However, you would still use the third person plural conjugation when using ‘they’ as a singular pronoun. For more on this, see this post on pronouns.

Conclusion

I’ll leave it here for today. The subject of verb conjugation can get quite tedious, so I won’t drag this out too long for today. If you do want to read more on the subject, I highly recommend the Blue Book of Grammar. Check out their blog post on verbs here. In the next part of this series on Wednesday, I’ll cover irregular verbs in more detail and talk about reflexive verbs, linking verbs and helping verbs. On Friday I’ll cover the concept of subject-verb agreement, split infinitives and implied subjects.

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Apostrophes and how to use them properly!

July 12, 2023 / / 0 Comments

Apostrophes – an easy guide to using them properly!

Ah, the apostrophe, the bane of many a writer’s life. An elevated comma? Or an important punctuation mark that is chronically misused? It is definitely the second one. Apostrophes are commonly used where they shouldn’t be and not used when they should be. So welcome the the first part of punctuation, where we talk about how to use punctuation properly, beginning with how to use apostrophes.

There are three main situations where an apostrophe should be considered. Simply put, the apostrophe is a punctuation mark that is used to indicate possession or to indicate where missing letters should be in contractions. There are a few rules regarding placement of apostrophes in certain situations which we will cover in detail below.

First use of the apostrophe: Contractions

Contractions are shortened words or phrases used for ease of speech or writing. They are extremely common in both written and spoken English and the majority of people know what they mean. However, using contractions can cause confusion at times, and it can lead to misuse of contractions. Do you know the difference between ‘your’ and ‘you’re’? We’ll be covering this in a later post in more detail, with useful ways to remember which one to use.

Contractions are great, and for most casual written content it is perfectly okay to use them. However, they are considered quite informal so they should definitely be avoided in formal letters, formal writing and academic writing. Here’s a few examples:

  • don’t = do not
  • doesn’t = does not
  • should’ve = should have (by the way, it is not “should of”. Ever!)
  • it’s = it is
  • ’tis = it is

Note the last two mean the same thing, but a different ‘i’ is omitted. The apostrophe goes where the missing letters should be. One apostrophe is all that is needed, even if you’re dropping ten consecutive letters, which would be an impressive contraction if you can do that!

Second use of the apostrophe: Possession

No, not the demonic kind. The belonging kind. Apostrophes are used to indicate possession. They are used after nouns and indefinite pronouns such as: the man’s house, the dog’s bone, the tree’s leaves. It should also be used after plural nouns that do not end in ‘s’: people’s, women’s, children’s. If the noun ends in an s sound, the extra ‘s’ can be left out if it makes the word more awkward to say and the apostrophe placed after the word.

For plural nouns that end in ‘s’, the apostrophe should be placed alone at the end of the word to indicate possession: puppies’, classes’, horses’. It should also be used when stating a period of time: three days’ time, ten weeks’ time. This form of apostrophe use also applies to singular nouns ending in ‘s’ or ‘z’ followed by the word ‘sake’: for goodness’ sake (taken from New Hart’s Rules, the Oxford Style Guide, Oxford University Press).

Apostrophes are not used with possessive pronouns such as ‘yours’, ‘hers’, and ‘theirs’. Remember ‘its’ is the possessive form of ‘it’, while ‘it’s’ is a contraction of ‘it is’. For more on pronouns, see a previous post here where I discuss pronouns and how to use them properly.

There are specific rules and conventions for proper names and phrases where apostrophe placement matters. If in doubt, look it up and double check. I like the Blue Book of Grammar as it’s easy to use. Check the apostrophe rules here for more details and examples.

Third use of the apostrophe: Plurals?

Sneaky heading here, as you should not be using apostrophes to create plural words. This is sometimes known as the “greengrocer’s apostrophe” and it is incorrect. Apostrophes are not needed when making plurals of names, numbers, abbreviations and words being used as nouns when they are not normally nouns.

For example: ‘dos and don’ts’ is correct. ‘do’s and don’t’s’ is incorrect. The first sentence contains a correctly used apostrophe in the contraction.

There are some situations where you would want to use an apostrophe, usually using symbols, letters or numbers as objects. For example: “mind your p’s and q’s”. In this case, the apostrophe gives clarity to the objects of the sentence, saying “ps and qs” would be very confusing. Readers might figure out what you mean, but people who haven’t heard the phrase and people for whom English is not their first language would be very confused.

Thank you for reading. Go forth and use your apostrophes properly!

Pride flag with text: What are pronouns?

Let’s talk about pronouns

July 10, 2023 / / 0 Comments

Pronouns are important, so let’s talk about how to use them properly in all situations. Oh boy, is this a hot topic right now! As I have made it my mission to use language correctly and help other people do the same, I thought I would weigh in on the discussions around pronouns and what they actually mean. To be clear, myself and my work is 100% LGBTQIA+ friendly and no homophobia, transphobia or anything like it will be welcome here. This is a safe space for everyone, but let’s see if we can’t educate a bit as well. So let’s start with the basics.

What are pronouns?

Most people will be aware of what a noun is. A noun is a naming word, such as ‘toaster’ or ‘lollipop’ or ‘dog’. A proper noun is a name for a specific noun, such as ‘Steve’ or ‘Buckingham Palace’ or ‘Playstation’. It’s a word you use to identify a specific thing you want to talk about.

When you are talking about a specific thing in detail, it can be tiresome to repeatedly use the noun over and over again. Especially when you are talking about a person. That is where pronouns come in. Pronouns are words used in place of nouns when you don’t need to repeat what or who you are referring to. Read the definition in the Collins Dictionary.

An example: Steve is going on holiday next week. He is really looking forward to it.

In this example, ‘he’ is a pronoun. We know we’re talking about Steve, so we can use a pronoun in place of his name in the second sentence. There are different types of pronouns used for different purposes.

Personal Pronouns

These are used for people and animals. They can be used as either the subject or the object of a clause. They include: I, you, he, she, it, me, him, her, they, them, we and us. It is almost impossible to talk about people without using pronouns. Everyone has pronouns. They are not a new invention, they have been part of the English language and many other languages for a long, long time. There are some languages where pronouns are not used, or are optional, but the context will indicate the subject being discussed.

Some personal pronouns are gendered, and some are plural (sometimes!) but we’ll get into that in more detail later. English has a structure that generally requires a subject for clarity so pronouns are quite important. You may find other languages use pronouns differently. Japanese sentence structure means it is often possible in spoken Japanese to drop the pronouns, if it is clear who you are referring to. So while Japanese has words for I, you, he, she, they, etc, it is not incorrect to drop them entirely, allowing for a single verb to become a complete sentence in some cases. Indeed, it can be considered quite rude to use a word for ‘you’ in Japanese. In English, this doesn’t really work as well.

Other kinds of pronouns

There are other types of pronouns in English. Reflexive pronouns are used when the subject is performing the verb on itself (see what I did there!). Itself, myself, yourself are all good examples and are essential in some sentences.

Possessive pronouns indicate ownership of something: mine, his, yours, theirs, hers, its (do not use an apostrophe here! See this post here.). ‘That is mine, you can’t have it.’ Look at all the pronouns! Obviously this sentence only makes sense with context around it.

Demonstrative pronouns indicate nouns by their location or position relative to where you are. This, that, these, those. This is nearby, that is far away. Make sense?

Relative pronouns link a modifier to a noun. ‘She’s the one who did it.’ Who, whom, that, and which are all relative pronouns.

Interrogative pronouns are your question words. Who, whom, whose, which, and what are all interrogative pronouns. They are used to replace the noun when you are asking a question. ‘What is that?’

Indefinite pronouns are pronouns that are used when you don’t need to be specific about who you are talking about so a personal pronoun isn’t needed. This includes words like everyone, anyone, someone, neither, much.

Gendered Pronouns

Getting into part of what has been an ongoing discussion regarding personal pronouns. In English, we have both gendered and non-gendered personal pronouns. She/Her and He/Him are gendered, for female and male respectively. What about the non-gendered ones? They/Them, I/m, You, We/Us. There are others out there, this list is not exhaustive as there are newer pronouns which some people who do not identify with a binary gender, feel is more suitable.

It is important to be aware that you cannot always know what someone’s gender is by their appearance or their name. Some names are gender neutral. You can’t assume. So how do you navigate this? Simple. If in doubt, ask. If you make a mistake, apologise and correct yourself then move on. Don’t make a fuss about it. Be polite and respectful. If someone else uses the wrong pronouns for someone, politely correct them and move on.

There is no need to argue about pronouns or tell someone who they are based on what you think you know. It’s basic human decency to respect other people by calling them what they want to be called. It’s no different from someone preferring to go by a nickname or middle name, or getting married and taking their spouses surname.

‘But ‘they/them’ is plural!

Yeah, no, it’s not always. I have seen this argument a lot when it comes to non-binary people using ‘they/them’ pronouns. “It’s not grammatically correct.” That’s incorrect. Don’t get me wrong, ‘they/them’ are used in a plural form, referring to groups of people. This occurs in other languages too, some languages even have gendered group pronouns. In English, however, ‘they’ and ‘them’ can be correctly used for a single person of unspecified, unknown or non-binary gender.

Don’t believe me? Collins Dictionary to the rescue: here. Or the Guardian’s Style Guide entry on pronouns: here. The Blue Book of Grammar, particularly Rule 11a and11b: here. Finally, this article from the Oxford English Dictionary, which is the most definitive record of the English language, which traces use of the singular ‘they’ back to the year 1375 which you can read here.

Conclusion and Inclusion

So, in summary, you cannot drag out the ‘basic biology’ argument when it comes to gender identities and ignore the ‘basic grammar’ of pronouns. Singular ‘they’ is correct. Plural ‘they’ is also correct. If you disagree, you’re transphobic, simple as that. Also, while this isn’t really the place to discuss it in detail, as a life sciences graduate with years of experience treating a large variety of animals, I hate to break it to you but there is no such thing as ‘basic biology’. It is never that simple. Ever. Biology does not have hard and fast rules about anything. Try some basic human decency and respect instead. It looks better on everyone.

Thank you for reading. Feel free to comment, if you can be respectful. Discussion is welcome, as long as you remember that opinions are for pizza toppings and ice-cream flavours, not people’s existences. I reserve the right to moderate the comments and remove inappropriate or hateful ones. See you next time!

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