Stop Making Contraction Mistakes Now. Here’s How.

 

Contractions. Everyone has messed up a contraction at one time or another. Sometimes these errors happen because a writer misunderstands the purpose of contractions, but most of the time they’re simply typos. Whatever the reason for your mistakes, we’ve got you covered.

If you don’t quite know the rules for contractions, you can brush up with our handbook.

If typos are your problem, try our free browser extension for help catching those keyboard slips (plus many other  types of writing errors). Add Grammarly to your browser.

What Is Verbing?

• To verb a noun means to use an ordinary noun as a verb in a sentence.
• English is flexible about the grammatical function of individual words. If you use a noun in the verb slot of a sentence, most people will understand what you mean.
• Be careful about verbing in very formal contexts, especially when there is already a common verb that would convey your meaning. Some people find verbing annoying.

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Have you ever friended someone on Facebook? Friend is a noun. Adding an -ed to the end to turn it into a verb is called verbing. Some nouns that people convert into verbs already have verb forms. For example, the verb befriend means to make friends with someone. However, social media made friending popular. Now, the dictionary defines the new verb as “to add a person to one’s list of social media contacts.” What else is there to know about verbing?

How to Verb

There are lots of ways to express the idea of turning a noun into a verb. The noun form of the act is verbification. Besides “to verb,” you might see “to verbify.”

Did you know that noun-to-verb conversions are abundant in English? People have been doing it for centuries. In fact, “verbify” is itself an example of the phenomenon. Nouns from all aspects of life are verbified:

Let’s table the proposal until we get more information.

I plated the asparagus next to the sweet potatoes to highlight the contrasting colors.

The flight has not yet deplaned.

The computer program is taking forever to download.

Modern-day speakers often verbify brand names.

Before the first day of class, she googled her professor.

I had to xerox a hundred copies of my résumé.

When is the last time you skyped your relatives?

Some verbs, like to google and to xerox, become so common that they are included in lowercase form in dictionaries.

How do you feel about new verbs? Some are fads, but others might stand the test of time. If you’d like to try making some verbs yourself, social media is a great place to test your creations. If someone objects, you can always unfriend them!

What Are Personal Pronouns?

A personal pronoun is a short word we use as a simple substitute for the proper name of a person. Each of the English personal pronouns shows us the grammatical person, gender, number, and case of the noun it replaces. I, you, he, she, it, we they, me, him, her, us, and them are all personal pronouns.

Personal pronouns are the stunt doubles of grammar; they stand in for the people (and perhaps animals) who star in our sentences. They allow us to speak and write with economy because they enable us to avoid repeating cumbersome proper nouns all the live-long day.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu was born in 1931 in South Africa and Bishop Desmond Tutu rose to international fame in the 1980s as an opponent of apartheid. The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Bishop Desmond Tutu in 1984. Bishop Desmond Tutu has written seven books and has cowritten or contributed to many others.

With personal pronouns, this paragraph becomes much easier, and much less annoying, to read.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu was born in 1931 in South Africa and he rose to international fame in the 1980s as an opponent of apartheid. The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to him in 1984. He has written seven books and has cowritten or contributed to many others.

First-, Second-, and Third-Person Pronouns

A personal pronoun can be in one of three “persons.” A first-person pronoun refers to the speaker, a second-person pronoun refers to the person being spoken to, and a third-person pronoun refers to the person being spoken of. For each of these three grammatical persons, there is a plural as well.

Subject and Object Pronouns

Personal pronouns can be either subjects or objects in a sentence. Subject pronouns are said to be in the nominative case, whereas object pronouns are said to be in the objective case.

Person	Nominative	Objective
First singular	I	me
Second singular	you	you
Third singular	he, she, it	him, her, it
First plural	we	us
Second plural	you	you
Third plural	they	them

The interrogative pronouns for all three persons are the same: who (nominative) and whom (objective). Many people get confused about when to use the interrogative objective pronoun whom, but it is quite easy to learn.

Mrs. Khan asked that the package be delivered to her at the office. (her = third person singular objective)

To whom should I address my letter? (whom = interrogative objective; I = first person singular nominative)

We would like to invite Stacy to join us for dinner. (we = first person plural nominative; us = first person plural objective)

Y’all Got a Problem? Second Person Singular vs. Plural

One pitfall of English is that it uses the same word, you, for both the second person singular and plural. Many other languages do not have this problem, because they use distinct words for each. But in English, we need a context to determine whether you is singular or plural.

Would you like to come over for dinner?

From this sentence alone, we can’t determine whether one person, or two, or five hundred people are being invited to share a meal. This is why in some parts of the world, we hear additions to you when a plural is indicated, like you lot in the UK or you all (or y’all) in America. It probably goes without saying that you should keep this out of your formal writing.

The Latest in Grammatical Debates: The Singular “They”

While the second person has a number issue, the third person has a gender issue that is hotly debated by editors around the globe. The problem occurs in cases when the gender of the third-person singular pronoun is indeterminate.

Using he or she and him or her is preferred by most style guides, but informally, a singular they is often used.

If a customer wants to speak to a manger, they can phone after 10 o’clock.

While your English teacher might lose his or her mind over this sentence, the singular they was recently deemed acceptable usage by the Associated Press. That said, until it becomes more widely accepted, you should avoid it in formal writing.

Grammar Basics: What Are Nondefining Clauses?

There are two types of relative clauses—defining and nondefining. To review, relative clauses can contain a subject, verb, and a relative pronoun, though not all are needed. The relative pronouns are who, whose, when, where, which, and that. Relative clauses are sometimes called adjective or adjectival clauses because they describe nouns like adjectives do. Defining clauses give essential information about the main noun. Often, they answer the question: “Which one?” If you haven’t already guessed, nondefining clauses do not define nouns. But what do they do?

Nondefining relative clauses provide supplementary information. However, the information is not key to the meaning of the sentence. In fact, the sentence would still make sense if you removed the nondefining clause. Look at these example sentences with and without nondefining clauses.

The country of Costa Rica has extensive measures in place to protect endangered rainforest animals. (This sentence does not have a relative clause.)

The country of Costa Rica, where extinct species such as the golden toad once thrived, has extensive measures in place to protect endangered rainforest animals. (The nondefining clause “where extinct species such as the golden toad once thrived” tells us more about Costa Rica, but nothing that is essential to understanding of the sentence.)

Besides the type of information added (essential vs. nonessential), the use of commas is different between the two types of clauses. Commas set off nondefining clauses from the rest of the sentence. Defining clauses do not need commas.

Was your guess correct? Celebrate by adding some nondefining clauses to your writing. They add supplementary information. They are not essential, but they can be quite interesting.

Which Writing Style Actually Makes You Open an Email?

What are your writing resolutions?

This poll is part of a series that Grammarly is running aimed at better understanding how the public feels about writing, language learning, and grammar.

Please take the poll and share your thoughts in the comments. We can’t wait to hear from you!

If you are interested in more, check out last week’s poll.

When Should I Use Inquire vs. Enquire?

• Traditionally, enquire simply meant “ask,” while inquire was used for formal investigations.
• In the UK, the two words are used interchangeably, although inquire is still the more commonly used word for formal or official investigations.
• In the United States, inquire is the strongly preferred spelling in all uses.

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For the most part, you can use either enquire or inquire and not make a mistake. These two words, however, have traditionally been used in a slightly different way, at least in the UK, which kind of makes them a pair of commonly confused words.

When to Use Inquire?

Inquire is what you’ll usually see in American English. It means “to ask” or “to investigate”:

We went to the mall to inquire about a job.

In British English, inquire has traditionally been used for formal or official investigations and queries:

We asked Lord Roundbottom to inquire into the matter of the new football stadium.

Today, the word inquire is also used in British English in the way it’s used in American English, to denote a general query.

When to Use Enquire?

Enquire is mostly used in British English for the general meaning “to ask” or “to investigate”:

I’ll go to Phil and enquire about the chances of getting a raise.

While inquire is also often used in the same sense as enquire in British English, it doesn’t usually go the other way around—enquire is rarely used for an official investigation or query.

Examples

This one will throw you for a loop: The Nationals have inquired with the Blue Jays about outfielder Jose Bautista’s availability, according to The Post’s Barry Svrluga.

CBS DC

However, he defended the regulator’s right to inquire whenever it felt that circumstances required it and suggested more use might be made of the BHA’s review function.

The Guardian

Go and check it out before you book – talk to management and staff, look at the dogs’ quarters, enquire about feeding and exercise routines and see how the people there interact with your dog.

Stuff