Grammar tips

These tips come from the specialists who run our Grammar workshop.

Come on our Grammar workshop to learn more tips

 

• English has patterns — not rules
• Distinguish between 'it's' and 'its'
• Keep related bits of a sentence together
• Know which word pairs trip you up
• Think about 'how many?'
• Be consistent
• Don't believe everything you remember from school

 

English has patterns — not rules

The grammar police aren’t coming to take you away — breaking the rules of English won’t get you locked up. But if you ignore the patterns of English or use the incorrect pattern, other people are likely to think you’re not well educated. They may also have trouble understanding you.

 

Below, we discuss some of the patterns you should follow if you don't want to confuse people.

 

Distinguish between ‘it’s’ and ‘its’

If you want to say ‘it is’ or ‘it has’ in short form, put an apostrophe where the missing letter is (it is = it’s).
 
A pronoun is a word that stands in place of a noun: I, me, my, mine, he, him, his, she, her, hers, it, its, you, your, yours, we, our, ours, they, their, theirs. They never have apostrophes.

Keep related bits of a sentence together

In English, word order is important — ‘I am sad because my only brother has died’ means something different from ‘Only I am sad because my brother has died’. Keep the ‘only’ closest to the word you are using it to modify.

 

Make sure modifiers (such as ‘only’) are in the correct place. Modifiers are information that change your understanding or add to your understanding. When we get them in the wrong place, we create ambiguous sentences: ‘Off the kitchen, there is a small porch with a washbasin through which there is access to the garage.’ Do you get to the garage by going down the washbasin’s plughole?

 

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Find out which word pairs trip you up — and learn them

Do you mix up ‘there’ and ‘their’, ‘affect’ and ‘effect’, ‘ie’ and ‘eg’, ‘practice’ and ‘practise’? Find a good list of these word pairs, print it, and hang it up on your wall.

List of commonly confused words

 

Using the incorrect word, or the incorrect form of a word, causes around 25% of all copy editing errors.

 

Think about ‘how many?’

If you have several people doing something, the word for the action — the verb — needs to be plural. If only one person is doing something,  the verb must be singular. ‘Several people swim quickly’, but ‘One person swims quickly.’

 

Be careful when talking about single entities made up of many people, for example, ‘the board’, ‘the committee’, ‘the jury’, ‘the team’, ‘the staff’, and ‘the Ministry’.

 

Example

‘The committee is delighted with the result.’ (correct)

‘The committee are delighted with the result.’ (incorrect)

 

Be consistent

Some style choices are optional. When they are optional, use the same patterns in the same way all the time — consistency helps your reader. For example, if you’re going to put an initial capital on your job titles, do it all the time. If you use New Zealand English spelling, do it all the time. If you’re adopting the Oxford comma, do it all the time.

 

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Don’t believe everything you remember from school

English isn’t Latin. In the past, grammarians tried to fit English practice into Latin grammar patterns. We ended up with some rules that don’t apply and don’t work, and that have been ignored by good writers ever since.

 

Three ‘rules’ that are just plain wrong:

1. You can’t begin a sentence with a conjunction.

Yes, you can! In informal writing, you can begin a sentence with a conjunction to emphasise the point you are about to make. Conjunctions include but, or, yet, for, and, nor, and so.

 

2. You can’t split an infinitive.

Yes, you can (with one word, and with care)! An infinitive is a verb form with ‘to’ in front of it: ‘to run’, ‘to fly’. You are allowed to say ‘to boldly go where no man has gone before’.

 

3. You can’t end a sentence with a preposition.

Yes, you can! A preposition shows something’s position in space or time. You can say ‘That scowl is something I won’t put up with.’ or ‘I don’t know who to give my application to.’

 

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