Grammar

Do you capitalize mom and dad or the names of other family members like granddad or grandma? Yes, when the word is a proper noun. No, if it comes after a possessive pronoun such as your, my, his, or her. No, if the word is after an article, a, an, or the. When is Mom…

Almost every style guide will tell you to avoid the split infinitive. But is this generalized rule always valid? We all know the famous Star Trek example of breaking the rule: to boldly go where no man has gone before. It would sound awkward if I applied good English grammar. My grammar checker correction says…

When do you use and how do you choose between a colon and a semicolon? Getting these two punctuation marks grammatically correct in your writing can be a little challenging at first. But it is not that difficult. They are closely linked to the comma, signaling a relationship between separate clauses in a complete sentence.…

How do you write reported speech dialogue? When you start to learn to write dialogue, it seems simple. All you need to do is add a reporting verb or dialogue tag. You probably learned this in high school. When a character speaks lines of dialogue, you put a double quotation mark at the beginning and end.…

Inversion in writing is when you place the verb before the subject. We use this type of inversion in question forms using the verb to be, modal, and auxiliary verbs. Inversion in English means changing the word order from the subject and then the verb to the opposite. You use inversion in English for questions…

Sometimes, it’s not easy to identify the difference between a gerund phrase and a participle phrase in a sentence. Both of them use the present participle, which is the ing form of a verb. For many writers, the difference between a participle and a gerund can be a little confusing at first. It is because…

If you are trying to find a reliable free passive voice checker, it’s not easy. Many of the free online tools you might find through a search are usually extremely limited or little more than an ad to buy a premium subscription app. But a few free tools are listed below that can help you…

There is a simple way to make sure you are using neither nor clauses correctly every time. All you need to do is remember that the first letter in each word starts with an N for not. In other words, these two words are always negative. The positive form is either-or. We use neither and…

You are often writing in the future tense when referring to an action or event at a time in the future. When you do, you would never think about how you use English grammar to construct meaning in your phrases. It is just a tense that comes naturally. But would it surprise you to know…