Good Day!
Every Week, Mr Micawber will add a new language point here for you to think about!
(Courtesy of An A-Z of English Grammar & Usage by Leech, Cruikshank and Ivanic)
FOREIGN PLURALS
Some words from foreign languages keep their foreign plural in English, but they also often allow an English plural form. The foreign plural tends to be more formal and to be preferred in scientific English:
cactus: cactuses or cactioctopus: octopuses or octopi
syllabus: syllabuses or syllabi
forum: forums or fora.
FOUR MAIN KINDS OF CONDITION EXPRESSED BY IF-CLAUSES
1. The present condition (Conditional 0): this has the simple present in both clauses of the sentence, and means that the condition can be true at any time. "If I eat too much, I get fat."
2. The 'will'-condition (Conditional I): predicting a likely result in the future if the condition is fulfilled. "If your girlfriend phones, I'll tell her you've gone out."
3. The 'would'-condition (Conditional II): imagining a different present or future. "If I had a steady job, I wouldn't be so poor."
4. The 'would-have'-condition (Conditional III): imagining the impossible, i.e. something which did not happen. "If I had driven more carefully, I wouldn't have been stopped by the police."
IDIOMS
An idiom is a group of two or more words which we have to treat as a single unit in learning a language. We cannot arrive at its meaning just by adding together the meanings of the individual words.
Phrasal verbs and phrasal-prepositional verbs are an important class of idioms:
I get on with my teacher very well. (This is an idiom, a phrasal verb. It means 'I have a good relationship with my teacher'.)I saw him get on the bus at 9 am. (This is not an idiom, it is just a verb + preposition, because the meaning is simply get + on.)
HOME
Home is the place where you live. Home normally has no article (a/the) in front:
I left home when I was 18.Home is where I am happiest.
His home is in Brussels, but he's Italian.
Notice these common adverbial expressions:
I'll be at home if you need me.She's going to school a long way from home.
Are you going home early tonight?
VERY SHORT PUNCTUATION GUIDE
Very basic points about punctuation marks:
A COMMA isolates groups of words in a sentence in order to make the sentence meaning clear. If you don't need one, don't use it. If you need too many, you should re-arrange the sentence elements.
'My father, an old soldier, found, to his surprise, that his uniform, including his hat, had become, for some reason, too small.''To his surprise, my old soldier father found that his hat and uniform had become to small, for some reason.'
A PERIOD and a SEMICOLON serve the same purpose: they separate two complete ideas (subject + predicate). A semicolon separates two more closely related ideas than does a period (a semicolon can often replace 'and').
'I went shopping yesterday; I bought a new pair of socks.''I went shopping yesterday. It was cold, so I took my car.'
A COLON separates a general statement on its left from details, explanation, or examples on its right.
'There are three main types of land transportation: buses, cars and trains.'I don't understand women: some say what they think, while others don't think what they say.'