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epic fail, facebook, Fail, fails, featured, grammar, Grammar Fail, other story, past simple, rulers, spelling, Their, there, They're, You're, Your
Posted by deerejohnn | Filed under Fail, Spelling, Uncategorized
08 Friday Feb 2013
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epic fail, facebook, Fail, fails, featured, grammar, Grammar Fail, other story, past simple, rulers, spelling, Their, there, They're, You're, Your
Posted by deerejohnn | Filed under Fail, Spelling, Uncategorized
04 Monday Feb 2013
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The world of business writing uses common formats for business e-mails, press releases, financial plans or even simple memos confirming a business meeting. Resumes stand in a category of their own, as various occupations merit various resume styles. Legal documents, such as real estate contracts, power to an attorney or wills, or medical documents such as insurance policies and autopsy reports require careful attention to technicalities. Various letter formats are very useful for letters of resignation, complaint or recommendation.
In contrast to the hard factual approach taken in expository writing, Creative writing lets you give vent to personal thought, subjective feelings and practically anything that comes to mind without having to provide evidence to support arguments. Such writing includes diary entries, personal blogs, love letters and just about any kind of free written reflection. Finally, literary writing, attempted by layman and artist alike, produces narratives for short stories or novellas, lyrical poems and sonnets, and dramatic prose for plays or movie scripts.
04 Monday Feb 2013
As English has the largest vocabulary compared to other languages, with estimates running between 500,000 and one million word items, it is important to know how to enrich your vocabulary. Words together form phrases, figures of speech and idioms which enrich one’s language figuratively and symbolically. In addition to tips on memorizing words, our vocabulary guide allows you to access information on word formation and derivation (roots, prefixes and suffixes), phrasal verbs, synonyms, antonyms, word origins in English, dictionary use, cliches, jargon, and words commonly confused.
04 Monday Feb 2013
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Grammar rules – although the term may evoke memories of endless memorization of dry rules with no apparent use, grammar can actually be a fascinating subject. Englishgrammar rules are actually very useful if not vital for English usage and English writing, if one wants to get messages across confidently and effectively. The rules of grammar tell us how we should form words and sentences in a way that is accepted as “grammatical” or correct, as the rules reflect the inherent structure of a language. Some linguists also include orthography (spelling, capitalization, and punctuation), semantics (word meaning) and pragmatics (language use in context) under a wider definition of grammar.
Grammar rules help us for many communicative purposes. For example, to talk about our past job experience at a job interview, we apply the rules for the present perfect tense. The rules for forming conditional sentences help us to express contrary to fact wishes, assumptions or regrets about missed opportunities, whereas the present simple tense is used to talk about hard facts and regular habits. In English writing, adjective clauses and verbal clauses help us add more information and enrich our sentences, while the rules governing conjunctions and transitional adverbs are vital when we want our text to appear coherent with logically related parts.
Knowing basic grammar terms such as verb, noun, adjective, adverb, phrase and clause is important in order to be able to analyze and improve your language performance, whether in your native language or even more so in a new language you are learning. Even though English grammar rules are considered simpler than those of French, German, Russian, Hindi or Arabic, many questions about the correctness and clarity of your sentences should arise while writing. In addition, as writing is a process demanding a considerable mental effort, most writers tend to inadvertently misuse the grammar rules and make mistakes, some of which have been found to be of common practice.
The attentive writer, however experienced, should always look for potential problem areas when applying the grammar rules of verb tenses (e.g. did Vs. have done), subject-verb agreement (e.g. The results show Vs. The result show), pronoun usage (e.g. he, his, him, himself), word order (e.g. subject-verb-object), sentence fragments and run-ons, sentence variety and the use of determiners (e.g. a, the, this, my), prepositions (e.g. in, on, at, during), gerunds and many more. Should isn’t or doesn’t be used? When is an s with apostrophe really necessary? All these are issues which good writing has to address in order to appear professional, confident and persuasive.