Confucius once said, “Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.” Gandhi once said, “Coercion cannot but result in chaos in the end.” Terry Pratchett once said, “In ancient times cats were worshiped as gods; they have not forgotten this.” Wise words. Wise words, indeed. When we repeat someone else’s words, it is important to give them their due using quotation marks. Using …
When we speak with other people or write down our thoughts, our choice of words is very important. Often, we may use words such as fireman or congresswoman without even considering if that is the appropriate term to use. At the same time, we may risk offending someone when we aren’t sure which is the correct pronoun to use or how someone identifies themselves. It …
We use words in writing. Shocking, I know! Do you know what else we use in writing? Here is a hint: they have already appeared in this paragraph. In addition to words, we use many different symbols and characters to organize our thoughts and make text easier to read. All of these symbols come in two major categories: punctuation marks and typographical symbols. These symbols …
Healthy people know how to take care of themselves. A caterpillar wraps itself in a cocoon before it becomes a butterfly. When it comes to grammar, you might consider yourself to be an expert. And if you do, you might have noticed that each of the previous sentences had subjects that were a little self-absorbed. What do we mean by that? Well, when we write …
Nouns do a lot of work in our sentences. They fulfill the important jobs of acting as subjects and objects. Sometimes, though, a noun needs a break or there’s not a noun that perfectly suits a sentence. When nouns need a helping hand, who are they going to call? No, not ghostbusters (that’s still a noun)—they call on pronouns. Pronouns can do all of the …
Erica has big dreams for the future. She will write lots of catchy songs that music lovers will be enjoying for years to come. By this time next year, she will have created the next huge pop hit! The next time you hear about her, Erica will have been entertaining people all over the world with her incredible music. Sounds great, right? There is just …
Ah, participles. The magical part of speech that looks like a verb but often acts like an adjective. They can be perfect. They can be continuous. Is there anything they can’t do? Well, they can’t teach you grammar, but, lucky for you, that won’t be a problem. We’ll teach you grammar—and all about participles! So you might have heard the word participle before, but maybe …
Nouns do a lot of work in our writing and in our speech. However, using the same noun repeatedly can make for some very repetitive sounding sentences: The cat meowed. The cat was hungry. The cat was looking for the cat’s owner. After the cat ate, the cat slept in the spot prepared for the cat. Enough, already! Let this cat sleep and stop using …
If you know your grammar, you probably know the basics about adjectives and adverbs. These parts of speech are used as modifiers and provide more information—think of the words funny or quickly, for example. When we want to zhuzh up our sentences, we can easily do so using adjectives and adverbs. But there is another type of modifier that packs so much information that it …
English is a language spoken all over the world. During its long life and many adventures, it has picked up quite a few quirks. (Look, English, we love you, but you really need to decide if Y is a vowel or not.) Whether you’re new to learning English or have spoken it your whole life, there are always new things to learn. Here, we’ve gathered …
We hope you’re ready for an important grammar lesson, because by the time you finish this article, you will have been reading plenty of examples of how to use a unique verb tense. In fact, you are about to learn a lot more about a neat way that we use verbs that just happened to appear in the last sentence. That is, we are about to enter …
Do you have any plans for tomorrow? Maybe you will eat a delicious breakfast alone, or you will go to a diner to enjoy a stack of pancakes with a friend? When you come home, you will watch TV or maybe you will browse social media. At the end of a long day, you will sleep in your bed. You might not do any of …