This week will be “short and sweet” as they say, sorry about last week, no English Corner, I couldn’t get out of bed for most of the week, I had a slipped disc, painful to say the least. Thankfully, I have a good Chiropractor in Armenia and was able to pull myself out of bed with the help of a lot of “diclofenac” to visit him.

Short and sweet: Brief but pleasant or relevant.

Weird (strange) Grammar Rules

Here are six common grammatical mistakes we see routinely, sometimes even natives make these mistakes, especially in newspapers and magazines.

Which and That;

That’ is a restrictive pronoun, so it’s vital to the noun to which it’s referring to, e.g. I don’t trust second-hand cars that aren’t nearly new. So in this instance, I trust all second-hand cars that are nearly new. ‘Which’ introduces a relative clause that allows non-essential qualifiers, e.g. ‘I only trust second-hand cars that are nearly new, which comes from Ford or Renault garages.’ So while ‘that’ restricts, ‘which’ is used to add more detail.

May and Might;

‘May’ implies a possibility, whereas ‘might’ implies far more uncertainty. For example: ‘I may fall over if I drink all that beer’ implies a good chance of falling over, but ‘I might start singing once the karaoke begins’ implies it’s not that likely to happen. In my case never!

Fewer and Less;

‘Less’ is reserved for hypothetical quantities, whilst ‘few’ and ‘fewer’ are reserved for items you can actually quantify. For example, ‘the company is less fun to work for now we have fewer than five employees’.

Affect and Effect;

‘Effect’ is almost always a noun, and ‘affect’ is almost always a verb. So ‘the effects of alcohol can be damaging’ describes the result or outcome of drinking alcohol. Affect is used to describe the influence or cause of an impression i.e. ‘alcohol’s affects can be damaging.

Impactful;

This doesn’t fit into the bracket of weird grammar rules. Instead, it’s just a word that’s not a word, according to some. It became very trendy in the corporate world during the 1980s. Use a synonym such as influential, powerful, or effective instead. Corporate slang more often than not can be weird at the best of times. One week I will do a list of the 80s “trendy- words”.

Comma Use with Adjectives;

– Use commas to separate coordinate adjectives as in the following: ‘The unkempt, brilliant man was always unhappy.’

– Do not use commas to separate cumulative adjectives: ‘The long yellow car circled the factory.’

– Do not use a comma when the adjective modifies both the noun and the other adjectives modifying it: ‘The late humorous and generous Mr Smith will be sorely missed.’

– Comma use with descriptive adjectives can also be determined by the class of adjective, i.e. age, size, colour, shape, material, origin and general. If multiple adjectives from the same class appear, separate them with a comma: ‘The sad, broken man fell into the smelly, murky lake’.

Until next Tuesday- Be good

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