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Verbs have three moods. Over the last two days I have covered the indicative and imperative moods; today I am going to blog about the subjunctive mood (the mood being the form that the verb takes and how it is meant to be understood by the reader). The subjunctive mood is used for situations that are … Continue reading
Verbs have three moods. Yesterday I covered the indicative mood and today I am going to blog about the imperative mood (the mood being the form that the verb takes and how it is meant to be understood by the reader). The imperative mood is all about orders, according to Bernard C Lamb in The Queen’s … Continue reading
Verbs have three moods which I will cover in separate blogs. Today I am going to explain the indicative mood (the mood being the form that the verb takes and how it is meant to be understood by the reader). The indicative mood is the most common of all three moods and “used for normal statements and questions” according … Continue reading
The noun circumlocution (or periphrasis) is “roundabout speech or writing, or using a lot of words when a few will do”, writes Graham King in his book Collins Improve your Writing Skills. Circumlocutionists tend to write something in a long winded, roundabout way to sound knowledgeable or when they don’t want to hurt someones feelings. … Continue reading
According to Cambridge Dictionaries Online http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/circa?q=circa, circa is a preposition word meaning approximately and is “used especially with years”. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circa explains that circa is also latin for ‘around’ and used quite a bit for historical writing. The shortened form can be written in any of the following ways (although the last two are only used … Continue reading
Deficient and defective are both adjectives with very different meanings. Their definitions are below: Deficient Cambridge Dictionaries Online http://www.dictionary.cambridge.org defines deficient as: “Not having enough of” “Not good enough” The Pocket Writer’s Handbook by Martin Mander & Stephen Curtis defines deficient as: “Lacking” “Inadequate” When used in a sentence: The doctor said that Sally is deficient in … Continue reading
“One of the most valuable services that adjectives provide is a range of comparisons” writes Graham King in his book Collins Improve your Grammar. According to John Seely in The Oxford A-Z of Grammar & Punctuation, many adjectives have three forms. They are: Absolute e.g. large (base adjective) Comparative e.g. larger (used when comparing two … Continue reading
I’ve never really stopped to analyse what the words it and there mean at the start of a sentence. Today I learnt that they are dummy subjects giving no information about the sentence. The Oxford A-Z of Grammar & Punctuation by John Seely explains that it and there “simply serve to start the sentence off”. Examples: It was raining on … Continue reading
The adjective lengthy is defined in the Collins English Dictionary & Thesaurus as ‘of relatively great or tiresome extent or duration’. Some shorter meanings are; long; drawn-out; prolix; verbose and tedious. Here is an example of lengthy being used in a sentence: The best man gave such a lengthy speech, that everyone fell asleep. Lengthily, on the other hand, is an … Continue reading
Have you heard of the word gerund? According to the Collins English Dictionary and Thesaurus, a gerund is “a noun formed from a verb” by using the present participle of a verb (ending in -ing) . Here are some examples: He is driving to work (driving in this sentence is a present participle) The driving range is five miles away (driving … Continue reading
My Writing Notebook 