Punctuation in English
Look at this correspondence between a man and his wife:
Wife : Darling, I found this necklace for $50,000. Shall I buy it on your credit card? Please, darling. I love you.
Man : No price too high.
Now look at this:
Wife : Darling, I found this necklace for $50,000. Shall I buy it on your credit card? Please, darling. I love you.
Man : No, price too high.
Now, to appreciate the 'value' of punctuation more fully, visit this site for Larry Trask's in-depth discussion: www.punctuation.com/
Spelling
Written English is anything but easy, especially in view of its spelling idiosyncrasies. However, a little attention to the details of this aspect of the language is enough to eliminate most spelling barrier and thereby create a good writing style. As second language users would observe, English orthography, like other alphabetic orthographies, uses a set of rules that generally governs how speech sounds are represented in writing. English has relatively complicated spelling rules when compared to other languages with alphabetic orthographies. Because of the complex history of the English language, nearly every sound can be legitimately spelled in more than one way…
You can read more or download useful information here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_spelling
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spelling_bee
www.say-it-in-english.com/SpellHome.html
British and American spelling systems can be quite a hurdle for the second language user/learner of English. Here, to eliminate such confusion, is a list of some possible problem areas between the two varieties of the language: www2.gsu.edu/~wwwesl/egw/jones/differences.htm
Commonly misspelled words
Here are the 100 words most often misspelled ('misspell' is one of them). Each word has a mnemonic pill with it and, if you swallow it, it will help you to remember how to spell the word. Master the orthography of the words…
Get the list and a few helpful tips from: www.yourdictionary.com/library/misspelled.html
Building vocabulary
Everyone-from beginning learners in English to veterans in journalism-knows the frustration of not having the right word immediately available in that lexicon one carries between one's ears. Sometimes it's a matter of not being able to recall the right word; sometimes we never knew it. It is also frustrating to read a newspaper or homework assignment and run across words whose meanings… There are many ways to improve your level of English, but only you can find the right way for you. Here are a few tips that might help… Start here:
http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/vocabulary.htm (Strongly recommended)
www.learnenglish.de/improvepage.htm
www.learnenglish.de/ImproveEnglish/improvevocabularypage.htm
Confusing words
Many words sound alike but mean different things when put into writing. This list will help you distinguish between some of the more common words that sound alike. Click on the links here to resolve the problem permanently:
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/grammar/g_spelhomo.html
www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html
Common grammatical mistakes
You may do a lot of damage to your spoken and written English if you do not take care of the mistakes listed here:
- Noun-verb mismatch, e.g. "A herd of horses are better than a flock of sheep" ("herd" is singular). "The City feels that this is a bad idea". (A city can't feel). "This paper will describe..." (Paper can't describe; only people can)
- Adjective used as adverb, e.g. and especially "I did good in this course"
- Split infinitive, e.g. "I urge you to not support this Bill".
- Misplaced modifier, e.g. "We need to stop dumping waste into the environment which kills the fish". To avoid this mistake, put the modifier as close as possible to the noun it is modifying. Repaired: "We need to stop dumping waste, which kills the fish, into the environment".
- Dangling (or misplaced) participle A participial phrase at the beginning of a sentence must refer to the grammatical SUBJECT of the sentence. Wrong: "As the largest reptiles ever to have lived, small mammals could not compete with the dinosaurs". This suggests that small mammals were the largest reptiles ever to have lived. Repaired: "Being small and defenseless, small mammals could not compete with the dinosaurs". More examples).
- Ending a sentence with a preposition, e.g. "This is something we need to work on".
- Starting a paragraph with a conjunction that should refer to the previous sentence, e.g. "Furthermore,...", "However,..."
- Run-on sentences (two complete sentences joined by a comma rather than a period or semicolon) "The lab is a dangerous place, you should wear a lab coat". (could be repaired by the addition of "so".
- Incomplete sentences, including those with no verb, e.g. "These animals could be harmed by various things. Pollution, for example."
- Mixing up the "notorious confusables" (confusibles?)(e.g. their vs. there).
- Compound adjective not hyphenated.
- Use of pleonasms, redundancies and tautologies (needless repetition of words over and over again multiple times)
- A series of statements without any connections to improve the flow.
- Commensurating incommensurables, e.g. "Reproduction in Hydra is unlike sponges" (Should be: "Reproduction in Hydra is unlike that in sponges").
- Comparative with no comparator, e.g. "Species that reproduce asexually exhibit a relatively uniform distribution of neoblasts". Relative to what?
Other useful sites if you want to improve your writing skills: http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/
Prepositional usage in English
Idiomatic expressions generally consist of nouns, verbs, adjectives, and phrases which are associated with specific prepositions. If any other preposition is used, then the expression is unidiomatic and, therefore, incorrect.
We present here a list of the Idiomatic Use of Prepositions in English: www.uwf.edu/writelab/handouts/idiomatic.cfm
And you can watch an online video of a lecture on the subject here:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlGJ6FsnhDQ
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