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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However should I use ‘however’? – Punctuation and word order with conjunctive adverbs
Tagged with: adverb, comma, commas, conjunction, conjunctions, furthermore, however, indeed, moreover, nevertheless, nonetheless, semicolon, therefore
Posted in Grammar, Punctuation
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…
Tagged with: conjunctions, connectives, connectors, linking words
Posted in Grammar, Proofreading/copy-editing
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…
Tagged with: machine translation, pronoun, pronouns, reference
Posted in Grammar, Proofreading/copy-editing, Reference
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. …
Tagged with: even if, even though, if, may, may have, might, might have, modal, modal verb, modal verbs, modality, modals, though
Posted in Grammar, Proofreading/copy-editing
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…
Tagged with: adverb, adverbs, modifier, modifiers, syntax, word order
Posted in Grammar, Proofreading/copy-editing
Posted in Grammar, Proofreading/copy-editing