Posted by admin on May 31, 2010 in
English Editing This adverb has two meanings:
A short time ago:
He and his wife have just arrived here.
Only:
I just had time to see my mother and sister off.
Sometimes it is not clear which of the two meanings is intended:
I’ve just bought this little flask.
Does this mean that the speaker only bought the flask and nothing else? Or that the speaker has bought it very recently? If you wish to be absolutely precise you may have to replace just, and/or add other words:
I only bought this little flask – nothing else.
I bought this little flask just now.
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Posted by admin on May 29, 2010 in
English Editing This is an occasion where the use of the apostrophe can cause problems. The rule is as follows:
Its:
This is the possessive form:
His face had lost its boyish roundness.
It’s:
This is the short form of it is:
It’s a sign of growing up.
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Posted by admin on May 28, 2010 in
English Editing In formal writing it is quite common to begin a sentence with it followed by the Passive form of the verb. For example:
It is felt that a person propelling a motorcycle with his legs astride the cycle and his feet on the ground by ‘paddling’ it, would be driving.
The sentence is taken from a legal text, so it needs to be precise. ‘It is felt’ is imprecise because it is unclear who it refers to. (And felt is rather a vague term.) Better to say:
If someone sits astride a motor cycle and uses their feet to ‘paddle’ it along the ground, then, in law, they are driving.
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Posted by admin on May 27, 2010 in
English Editing A verb that does not form its Past tense and Past participle in a regular way. Regular verbs work like this:
Stem Past Tense Past Participle
happen happened happened
tango tangoed tangoed
smile smiled smiled
If the stem ends in a consonant or a vowel other than e, then you add the letters ed. If the stem ends in e then the letter d is added.
Irregular verbs do not follow this pattern. Linguists divide them into seven different groups within which there are patterns. For everyday purpose it is more helpful to divide them into three:
Verbs in which the stem, the past tense, and the past participle each have a different form.
Verbs in which the past tense and the past participle have the same form which is different from the stem.
Verbs where all three are the same.
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Posted by admin on May 26, 2010 in
English Editing When a text includes a direct quotation from another book, or from what someone has said, quotation marks are used to mark it off:
Alan Lomax calls the work song a ‘spiritual speed-up’.
But if the passage to be quoted is fairly long it is often set out differently on the page, usually by indenting:
The African musicologist Nicholas Ballanta-Taylor describes it:
Music in Africa is not cultivated for its own sake, it is always used in connection with dances or to accompany workmen. The rhythmic interest of the songs impels them to work and takes away the feeling of drudgery …
When this is done, inverted commas are not necessary.
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