5 top tips for English grammar

Have you ever run into grammatical challenges when writing texts in English? This blog post explores some of the key elements that can help take your written English skills to the next level. From keeping track of all the various tenses to knowing when to use capital letters (not to mention the small but often misunderstood apostrophe), we have selected five of the most common problem areas and present helpful hints to guide you towards correct usage – and to raise your written English to new heights of clarity and professionalism.

There can be no doubt that English is one of the largest languages in the world, and its globally recognised status makes it one of the most commonly used languages in the fields of commerce, science and culture. So it has become pretty much essential for everyone – especially people for whom it is not the first language – to learn and master English in both written and spoken forms.

#1 What does subject-verb agreement mean?

Even though this may look straightforward, it often causes problems. Unsurprisingly, subject-verb agreement refers to matching the form of the verb to the subject of the sentence. To check this agreement, it is a good idea to ask yourself two quick questions:

1. What is the subject of my sentence?

2. Is it singular or plural?

For example:

“He writes great texts in English”

“They write great texts in English”

Of course, English has several tenses and more than a few exceptions when it comes to conjugating verbs, but as a rule, the third person singular of verbs in the present simple tense ends in “s”, while the other forms of the verb take no ending.

#2 Homophones – why it is so important to pay attention to spelling

Homophones are words that sound the same, but which are spelled differently and have different meanings. This can make it difficult to work out when to use which word – and which spelling.We’ve come up with a couple of handy hints which, we hope, will make it easier for you to identify the differences between some homophones.

• There/Their/They’re
  
  “There” contains the word “here”, which indicates that it refers to a location. So look for this “sub-word” (here) to remind yourself that “there” is used to talk about a place.
  
  In the word “their”, we can identify another “sub-word”. An “heir” is someone who stands to inherit something, i.e. has a claim on some kind of property. It therefore follows that “their” is used as a possessive.
  
  “They’re”, on the other hand, is a simple contraction. We’ll take a closer look at this later on in this post. The apostrophe indicates that two words – in this case a subject and a verb [“they are”] – have been merged (contracted) to form a single word.
  
  

• Your/You’re
  
  When you want to use the possessive form of “you”, use “your”. In contrast, if you want to merge a subject and a verb [“you are”] to use with a gerund or an adjective, “you’re” is the correct choice. So a simple way to check for the difference is to look at the class of the word that follows the form you are unsure about.
  
  

• Its/It’s
  
  Are you more of a visual learner? If so, it may help to imagine the little apostrophe in “it’s” as a separate “i”; this will make it clear that this homophone is formed through a contraction of the words “it is”.  

#3 Capitalisation in English

English contains a set of specific rules for when to use capital letters. These include the obvious situations of the first letter of the first word in a sentence, names, titles and countries. But are you up to speed on other cases where capitalisation is used in English?

Other words that take capital letters include days of the week, months and nationalities. Perhaps most importantly of all, you need to remember that the first person singular pronoun – “I” – is always capitalised.

For example:

"In August, I met a boy named Carl while on vacation in Spain. He is British and goes to school in London. I am going to visit him there on Friday."

#4 When do we use an apostrophe?

Fundamentally, there are two occasions when you need to use an apostrophe in written English: when you write contractions and for possessives. However, a variety of rules govern the use of the apostrophe.

When you are using a possessive apostrophe, you can generally rely on the following rule: “-’s”. The “apostrophe + s” rule applies to both singular and plural forms. That said, if a noun ends in “s” already, you can form the possessive form simply by adding an apostrophe to the word [His name is Louis. This is Louis’ book.]

Earlier in this post, we looked at words such as “they’re” and “it’s”. These are two examples of contractions. The tip for this grammatical structure is that you must always place the apostrophe in the place where you “delete” a letter. For example:

• it is → it’s

• do not → don’t

• they are → they’re

#5 “Who”, “whose”, “whom” and “who’s”

We can well understand how you could be a little confused by this string of words. These are some of the English words that are often used incorrectly because people fail to pick up on the contextual differences.

Here, we would like to focus on “who” and “whom”, because these are the two words from our list that most closely resemble one another.

Our tip is to remember that “whom” is used in the same grammatical cases as “him”. So to test whether you are using “whom” correctly, simply ask yourself if “him” would also be correct in the construction.

In the sentence “Who threw the ball?” the word “him” would not make any sense, so the correct word to use here is “who”. However, if you were to ask: “You threw the ball to whom?” it would be grammatically correct to replace the interrogative pronoun with “him”, so “whom” is the correct form here.    

Do you have a text you need translated into flawless English?

Even though these five tips will, we hope, help improve your written English, we at World Translation are always ready to help you with your translation assignments. Give us a call or send us an email and we will be happy to come up with a solution for you. You will find our contact details here.