Category: Grammar
Mar
Primary school pupils will only get credit for using exclamation marks in sentences beginning with ‘what’ or ‘how’, under strict new UK Government rules.
Ministers have been accused of “taking writing back to the 19th century” after issuing the restrictive new guidance over what counts as an “exclamation”.
“For the purposes of the English grammar, punctuation and spelling test, an exclamation is required to start with What or How,” the guidance for Key Stage 1 and 2 national curriculum tests states.
Feb
We all have our grammatical bugbears. If you’re anything like me, they’ll irritate you, but you’ll let them go. No one wants to be the smart-arse constantly reminding people that it should be “fewer” and not “less”. But for software engineer Bryan Henderson, that kind of defeatism just doesn’t cut it. Every Sunday night, before he goes to bed, he tracks down and expunges the 70-80 new instances of “comprised of” that have appeared on Wikipedia in the past 7 days, according to Medium. He is a super-pedant.
Feb
The “rule” against splitting infinitives appeared in the 1800s, but it wasn’t initially put forth as a rule. See what was on Henry Alford’s mind when he advised against the construction.
Splitting infinitives is a grammar topic, but the “rule” you may have learned against splitting infinitives isn’t as hard-and-fast as you might imagine.
Jan
As conjunctions, but and yet are interchangeable. One is often substituted for the other to avoid repetition. Using one or the other in both spots would also create the same meaning, but it might sound repetitive.
Both words also work as adverbs, and in their adverbial senses they are not interchangeable. Yet usually means up to this time, while the adverbial but usually means only. For example, but and yet are not interchangeable.
Source: Grammarist
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