Blog Archives

However should I use ‘however’? – Punctuation and word order with conjunctive adverbs

As is no big surprise when it comes to the English language, the question of how to use ‘however’ is complicated by the fact that the word has two different meanings: ‘in whatever way’ and ‘by contrast’. ‘However’ meaning ‘in

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Posted in Grammar, Punctuation

Difficulties with ‘and’

I’d like you to understand, doctor. I grant you it’s easy enough to choose between a ‘but’ and an ‘and.’ It’s a bit more difficult to decide between ‘and’ and ‘then.’ But definitely the hardest thing may be to know

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Posted in Grammar, Proofreading/copy-editing

Reference – pronouns and the importance of human proofreaders

I wrote in a previous blog post (Plausible typos and homophones) about the continued importance of human proofreaders and their superiority (for now) over computers. Another area where humans’ use of contextual inference outperforms machines’ analysis is the grammatical issue

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Posted in Grammar, Proofreading/copy-editing, Reference

Even if you think you know the answer, you may not! If vs though and may vs might

As I’m sure you’re aware, our beloved English language is full of little subtleties that are a continual source of fascination and confusion. Even if and even though Consider, for example, the difference in meaning between these two sentences: 1.a. 

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Posted in Grammar, Proofreading/copy-editing

What’s maths got to do with modifiers? Only, just, both and either

At first glance, it may seem that the precision and regularity of mathematics bear little relation to the notorious irregularity of the English language, but there is one area in which English is surprisingly logical: the position of adverbs such

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Posted in Grammar, Proofreading/copy-editing