Interjections

Ouch! Oh my! Wow! Yikes!

If you’ve ever uttered any of the words above, you’ve used an interjection, whether you knew it at the time or not. The word interjection comes from the Latin words inter (between) and jacĕre (to throw). So, an interjection is a word that you throw in between sentences or thoughts to express a sudden feeling.

Standalone Interjections

Because interjections usually express sudden feelings, you’ll often see them used to convey surprise (both good surprises and bad ones) or excitement.

Yikes! There’s a snake in the garage! You planned this party just for me? Wow! Ouch! That wasp just stung me! Yahoo! Oops. Terrific! Jordan will send you the contract this afternoon.

There’s no strict rule about where an interjection must go in relation to other sentences. You can use an interjection before or after a sentence that explains what’s going on. You can also use an interjection alone, although it may not make sense if you haven’t adequately described the situation that caused you to use the interjection. Interjections often use exclamation points, but they don’t necessarily have to.

Interjections in a Sentence

It’s possible to use an interjection within a sentence. When you do, treat the interjection as a parenthetical element that’s separate from the rest of the sentence. You can put the interjection inside parentheses or set it off with commas.

I may not succeed, but, hey, at least I tried. The project was delayed because the logistics team made a few (ahem) miscalculations. It will take only thirty minutes (Wow!) to reach the city on the new train.

The important thing to remember is that the interjection should be set off somehow. Don’t just drop it in with nothing to mark it as separate from the rest of the sentence.

I forgot to do the homework assignment oops but my teacher gave me an extra day to finish it.

I forgot to do the homework assignment (oops), but my teacher gave me an extra day to finish it.

Gee I hadn’t thought of that.

Gee, I hadn’t thought of that.

When to Use Interjections

Because interjections are usually separate from other sentences, it’s hard to use them incorrectly. The bigger concern is whether it’s appropriate to use an interjection in your writing. Interjections are fine to use in casual and informal writing. It’s okay to use them in speech, too. But avoid using interjections in formal writing because it may appear that you’re not treating the topic seriously.

And now, you’re ready to go out and use interjections. Hooray!

This Emoji Guide Is Fire

Emojis may be the cutting edge of language, but do any of us really know how to use them? For example, let’s say your friend sent you a text that read, “???☺️.” Would you know that it meant “the key to success is a great attitude”? Unless you and your friend have already established emoji conventions of your own, probably not. Emojis, while an interesting communicative device, don’t yet have a formal system of grammar governing their use. In fact, SwiftKey, one of the apps that helps people send more emojis, has shown that emoji combinations are overwhelmingly repetitions of a single emoji for effect. This supports the stance that emojis are not a new language, but a system that allows speakers of a certain language to express emotions and opinions in a new way.

Although the emoji system of communication will most likely evolve, we’ve collected a few best practices to help you use emojis more efficiently. Check them out and leave your thoughts on the future of emojis in the comments below.

A Guide to Emoji Grammar from Grammarly

How to Spell 40: Forty or Fourty?

40 (forty) is the number that follows 39 and precedes 41. Though it’s related to the number “four” (4), the modern spelling of 40 is “forty.” The older form, “fourty,” is treated as a misspelling today. The modern spelling could reflect a historical pronunciation change.

If you catch yourself misspelling the name of this number as fourty, you’re not alone. It’s a common mistake, both in print and online:

Female grey whales are fighting for their life. Fourty-three female whales are breeding in the group in 2015, a big increase from the 27 female whales in 2004.

—Nature World News

Fourty years ago when the mayor of Elkhorn was Bill Bartley, he and his council members saw the need for a village seniors complex and residence that would keep area seniors in the community as active members.

—Empire Advance

Nevertheless, the correct spelling, forty, prevails.

Forty state legislators oppose a plan to legalize casinos in three Arkansas counties, a group hoping to block votes on the measure announced Monday.

—Hot Springs Sentinel Record

The staff got the surprise of their lives when the note in question came out without ‘forty’ being censored to ‘fourty’. . . This time the collector stood up and said, “I’m sorry, Mr Pati. I checked the spelling of ‘forty’ in the dictionary. You are correct.”

—New Indian Express

The second quote from the New Indian Express helps demonstrate how to get to the bottom of the issue. Check a dictionary! You will find that the correct spelling is definitely forty. Dictionaries usually provide any accepted alternative spellings of words, but there is no acceptable variant spelling of forty.

Why are there so many instances of fourty on the Internet? Well, it’s kind of a tricky spelling, especially in compound numbers such as forty-four. Forty actually deviates from a pattern if you think about it. There’s four, fourteen, and then forty. Afterward there’s four hundred, four thousand, and so on.

What about related terms? Fortieth relates to forty, so there’s no U. On the other hand, fourth refers to four, so it is spelled with a U. In fact, that’s a good memory aid to help you differentiate the two.

Here’s a tip: The U is associated with four and related words, but forty and its derivatives don’t have a U.

Why Is Forty So Different?

Forty is unique, but how did it get that way? The Online Etymology Dictionary traces forty to Old English from a Northumbrian word that compounded terms meaning “four” and “group of ten.” As early as 1821, its modern spelling appeared in expressions such as forty winks and forty-niners. Just in case you’re wondering, forty winks refers to a short nap and a forty-niner is a person who migrated to California in 1849 to prospect gold. A San Francisco football team, the 49ers, currently bears the name (although they tend to use numerals and thereby avoid the forty/fourty problem altogether). You can easily find references to these iconic “forty” terms in literature. Here’s one:

If she’ll just stay around the house for a few days and take forty winks of sleep she’ll be as fit as ever.

—F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gretchen’s Forty Winks

Don’t be too hard on yourself or others who add that extraneous U to forty. It’s really not intuitive, and there are so many instances of fourty online that you might think it’s right. Avoid being fooled by remembering that forty does not have a U.

Led or Lead—The Past Tense of Lead?

• Led is the correct way to spell the past tense of lead.
• Lead is a common misspelling of the past tense of the verb lead.

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The past tense of the verb lead is led, not lead. One reason for the confusion might be that a similar verb, read, has an infinitive that’s spelled the same as the past tense. But with lead, that’s not how things are.

Definition of Led

Led is the past tense of the verb lead:

She led the party through the marshland.

The accident led to an astonishing discovery.

They led us believe we were welcome guests.

By the way, if you see the word led written in uppercase—LED—it’s an acronym that stands for light emitting diode, which is, as its name says, a diode that emits light.

What Does Lead Mean?

Lead is also the name of a certain type of metal. However, when it’s used for the metal, the word lead is pronounced just like led, which can add to the confusion:

His legs felt heavy, like they were made from lead.

You should avoid getting lead poisoning.

The soft core of a pencil is also sometimes referred to as lead, even though it’s made out of graphite and doesn’t usually contain lead:

The lead in this pencil is too soft.

Examples

Beaming with pride, this is the inspiring moment heroic Frankie Sherwood led his beloved Newcastle United out in front of thousands of fans.

The Chronicle

Babar Azam led Pakistan’s fightback on day three with an unbeaten 90 as they went on to post 216 in their first innings following which rain played spoilsport restricting New Zealand’s second innings to just one delivery at stumps of the second Test in Hamilton.

Cricket World

Dr Andy Wakefield led the field research in a project supervised by Professors Gareth Jones and Stephen Harris from the University’s School of Biological Sciences.

Science Daily

The loss dropped the Heat to 4-10, with Haslem inserted late in a game the Pistons led by as many as 28 points.

Sun Sentinel

Relax, Grammar Pedant. Everything You Know Is Wrong

Rules are rules, and they exist for a reason. They create order and minimize uncertainty. They are necessary because nothing would work without them. But some people don’t seem to understand that.

They don’t understand why it’s bad to split your infinitives, or why you shouldn’t start a sentence with a conjunction, or why you can’t end it with a preposition. Some people just don’t care. Some people just want to watch the world burn, fuelled by the misuse of “good” for “well,” and “while” for “though.” But if the world really depends on people adhering to those strict and sometimes obscure grammar rules, it might as well burn. Because all of the pedantic rules mentioned above are wrong. Forget everything you know, grammar pedant, because it’s all a lie.

Okay, so maybe the world won’t burn, and maybe not everything you know about grammar is a lie. A lot of it might be, though. Some grammar rules are simply myths with little to no basis in how the language is actually used. Other grammar rules aren’t applicable across the whole spectrum of English subtypes and dialects. And there are rules with so many exceptions that they probably shouldn’t be called rules.

Take the myth about ending sentences with a preposition, for example. We know exactly who to blame for this little superstition. John Dryden, a seventeenth-century British poet, was the person who came up with this “rule.” Robert Lowth, a bishop in the Church of England and a composer of prescriptive grammar textbooks, is often blamed for perpetuating the myth, but in fact he said quite clearly that avoiding a sentence-ending preposition is a matter of style, not grammar. Why did Dryden and Lowth do this? Well, they were men of their time, and in their time it was very popular to force English to follow the the rules of another language. That other language was, you guessed it, Latin. It’s true, you can’t end a sentence with a preposition in Latin. But it’s a common and correct construction in English.

The prohibition against splitting infinitives is another one that seems to have sprung from a fondness for applying Latin grammar rules to English. In English, splitting an infinitive means inserting an adverb between “to” and the uninflected form of a verb (e.g., “to boldly go”). Latin doesn’t have split infinitives because in Latin an infinitive is a single word. But in English, rigidly avoiding split infinitives can change the meaning of your sentence or make it more difficult to understand. So go ahead and split an infinitive when you need to, Latin be damned.

Another of these hobgoblins is the supposed rule that you can’t start a sentence with a conjunction. Starting too many sentences with conjunctions will make your writing awkward, for sure, but never doing it? It’s overkill. Conjunctions glue the elements of your writing together. These elements might be words or clauses. But they can also be sentences.

The rules governing the use of “that” and “which” are also a bit shaky. The rule says that we should use “that” for restrictive relative clauses and save “which” for nonrestrictive relative clauses. This rule is sort of half-true, because using “that” for nonrestrictive relative clauses does sound a bit awkward. But the part of the rule that says you can’t use “which” for restrictive relative clauses is, well, not a good rule. You can do it, and there are situations when it’s the only choice you can make.

The point is that you shouldn’t blindly follow every prescriptive rule you come across without a second thought. Following these rules in formal writing and speaking might do you some good—people believe they’re true, remember—but in your everyday communication, you don’t have to worry about splitting infinitives or starting sentences with conjunctions. You can sometimes even let your modifiers dangle.

There are plenty of real rules to worry about, after all. Do you know the proper order of adjectives, for example? You probably wouldn’t be able to recite it off the top of your head, but if you use more than one adjective to describe something, you will intuitively arrange them in a way that just sounds good. You will say that something is big or small before you say which color it is. You will say that something is new or old before you say it’s French or British or Ugandan. There are plenty of rules you use you’re not even aware of. So relax, grammar pedant. Sit back, grab some marshmallows, and enjoy the fire if you think it’s there.

Got a Problem With Passive Voice? These 7 Sentences Will Help

By Akmal Akbarov

Do you have a problem with the passive voice? Do you know the difference between the passive and active voices?

Well, you don’t have to worry any longer because I have created this article just for you.

If you scroll down, you will see that I have taken one sentence and showed you how to write it in both the active and passive voices.

In the active voice your sentences usually follow this formula:

Subject + verb + object

For example: I clean my room every day. –> I (subject) + clean (verb) + my room (object) everyday.

To rewrite the sentence in the passive voice, you must make the object of this sentence the subject of the new sentence. The verb in a passive voice sentence is made up of an inflected form of to be and a past participle.

For example: My room is cleaned every day. –> My room (subject) + is (verb to be) + cleaned (past participle) every day.

Now let’s see how other tenses in English work in the passive voice. �� 1. Present Simple Active Voice I clean my room every day. I = subject clean = verb my room = object

1. Present Simple Passive Voice My room is cleaned every day. My room = subject is = verb to be (present tense) cleaned = verb past participle

2. Past Simple Active Voice I cleaned my room yesterday. I = subject cleaned = verb (past tense) my room = object

2. Past Simple Passive Voice My room was cleaned yesterday. My room = subject was = verb to be (past tense) cleaned = past participle

3. Present Perfect Active Voice I have cleaned my room this morning. I = subject have cleaned = verb (present perfect tense) my room = object

3. Present Perfect Passive Voice My room has been cleaned this morning My room = subject has been = verb to be (present perfect tense) cleaned = past participle

4. Present Continuous Active Voice I am cleaning my room now. I = subject am cleaning = verb (present continuous tense) my room = object

4. Present Continuous Passive Voice My room is being cleaned now. My room = subject is being = verb to be (present continuous tense) cleaned = past participle

5. Past Continuous Active Voice I was cleaning my room yesterday. I = subject was cleaning = verb (past continuous tense) my room = object

5. Past Continuous Passive Voice My room was being cleaned yesterday. My room = subject was being = verb to be (past continuous tense) cleaned = past participle

6. Future Simple Active Voice I will clean my room tomorrow. I = subject will clean = verb (future simple tense) my room = object

6. Future Simple Passive Voice My room will be cleaned tomorrow. My room = subject will be = verb to be (future simple tense) cleaned = past participle

7. Future (Going to) Active Voice I am going to clean my room this weekend. I = subject am going = verb to clean = infinitive my room = object

7. Future + Going to Passive Voice My room is going to be cleaned this weekend. My room = subject is going = verb to be = verb to be (infinitive) cleaned = past participle

​If you still have questions, please don’t forget to comment!

Hi, my name is Akmal. I’m an English language enthusiast, blogger, writer, and entrepreneur. In addition to being the founder of EnglishClubPro.com, I’m also a teacher of English with more than ten years of experience. I love helping aspiring English learners to master their English. Post adapted from original post.