Useful guides
The QES useful guides to English
Thanks to the support of a few QES members, the list of Useful Guides to English is slowly growing in number. Topics include a complete guide to punctuation, formal business writing techniques and several pages devoted to basic written English.
Take a look at the available guides and if you can come up with additional suitable topics, please get in touch with the Project Co-ordinator. It's ideas we need and you may not actually want to write the material, but we will arrange all of that, including the preparation for publication on our website. In the meantime, our thanks to those who have submitted items for this important project.
Basic Written English
by Bill Ball, Rhea Williams and Tony Scott Introduction Before we can write we have to learn to read, and before we can read we have to learn to speak. That is the normal order of events from the time we are born to about the age of four. Indeed, that is how the language came into being all those years...
Basic Written English - Part 2
This is the solution to the puzzle we set on the previous page. It's a good idea to practise building sentences in the same way: The Paragraph If a sentence may be defined as a group of words expressing a single thought, and ending with a full stop, a paragraph may be regarded as being an ordered sequence of sentences expressing...
Basic Written English - Part 3
Punctuation or 'stopping' is used by the writer to help the reader to understand the construction and meaning of a passage without undue effort. It is akin to the various signs used by a composer in a piece of music, and is just like the various signs on our roads. Just as we cannot drive safely without following road...
The main punctuation marks
1. The Full Stop a. This is the strongest punctuation mark, making the most definite pause (in reading aloud or silently) when used at the end of a sentence. As shown in the previous examples, it is used at the end of sentences unless they are questions, strong exclamations or strong commands. It is also called a period and...
Balancing correlative conjunctions
by Bill Ball Correlative conjunctions are used in pairs to link two equal grammatical elements in the same sentence. The main pairs are 'both.. .and', 'either... or', 'neither.. .nor', and 'not only.. .but also'. in sentences containing any of these pairs, the items linked should be of the same grammatical type: noun/noun, adjective/adjective, phrase/phrase, clause/clause, etc. in other words, the...
Formal Business Writing
A Guide to Business Writing "Good business writing is a lot harder than it sounds. For the generation of new executives brought up on mobile phones, and used to communicating by SMS or MMS, it can be particularly daunting." - Sidney Callis. From the book Business Writing - A Guide to Doing It Well by Sidney Callis 1. Introduction The main purpose of any writing...
Formal Business Writing (part 2)
A Guide to Business Writing (Contd.) All writing should be readable and interesting, and communicate its message clearly and unambiguously. Meet these aims by writing in a good, clear style. 4. Style There are no hard and fast rules — rules are a substitute for the thought which is essential for improving a writer's style. The most common fault is attempting to...
Formal Business Writing (part 3)
A Guide to Business Writing (continued) 5. Write clearly, simply and specifically Here are some common pitfalls to avoid: superfluous words pompous phrases vague, abstract words and phrases 'hedging' the proximity rule misuse of pronouns words with several meanings double negatives. Superfluous words 'staff of suitable calibre and quality' (Overemphasis and confusion of meaning.) 'I personally believe...' (Who else believes?) Another common fault is unnecessary adjectives and adverbs: true facts (If it is a...
A Guide to Business Writing (part 4)
A Guide to Business Writing (Contd.) 6. Memos Purpose The purpose of a memo is to communicate as briefly as possible, so that action will follow as quickly as possible. It cannot do this effectively unless its subject and intention are immediately obvious to the receiver. The importance of memos The memo is essential in any organisation. Messages need to be sent from one...
The Double Negative
by Bill Ball & Tony Scott The use of the double negative for emphasis is, as we say, as old as the hills; and it was used in this way centuries ago much more frequently than it is today. But what is a double negative and why is it now regarded as an error? The easiest way to answer these...
Grammatical Attraction
by Bill Ball There is physical attraction and there is grammatical attraction. A relationship based on physical attraction alone is often a disaster waiting to happen. Grammatical attraction does not usually lead to a disaster but it can easily lure us into grammatical error. Grammatical attraction mainly occurs when the verb of a sentence or a clause is 'attracted' into...
The Hyphen Puzzle
by Bill Ball You may have already studied the Punctuation Guide within this website, but here, we take a closer look at one particular aspect - HYPHENS Writing in 1926 in 'Modern English Usage', Fowler said, 'The chaos prevailing among writers or printers or both regarding the use of hyphens is discreditable to English education'. If our national newspapers are anything...
The Hyphen Puzzle (part 2)
In the first part of this guide, we looked mainly at examples of compounds where hyphens should not be used. Here, now, are my further suggestions and comments. 1. Two-word compound adjectives (not containing adverbs) usually need hyphens when they are used attributively: A red-hot poker. An ivy-covered cottage. His old-fashioned suit. A load-bearing wall. So, too, do compounds such as 'out of tune' and...
'Get off of my cloud'
Beware of 'OFF OF!' On the 30th November 1965, Rock legends - The Rolling Stones - released their memorable hit 'HEY! YOU GET OFF OF MY CLOUD.' Did they unwittingly start a trend in the way many of us now speak some forty five years on? If I could have my way.... By Douglas Hitchman It could be argued that the Rolling...
My husband and I
"My husband and I": a matter of personal pronouns By Ted Bell The question of whether to say or write "my husband and I" or "I and my husband" is not a matter of grammar but one of modesty or politeness. It is usually considered good form not to put oneself first. However, this may be why many people think that...
Verbless Sentences
By Bill Ball Although there have always been verbless sentences in English, many grammarians of old insisted that a sentence had to contain at least one 'finite' verb. Examples of finite verbs are 'is', as in 'The weather is fine', and 'plays', as in 'He plays tennis'. The word 'finite' broadly means 'having a subject'. In the above examples, the...
Substitute and replace
Substitute does not mean Replace by Ted Bell There is some confusion among many people about the wordssubstitute and replace. These words are not interchangeable; they refer to the same process, but there is a difference between them. It is really quite a simple difference, a matter of the writer's or speaker's point of view. If you substitute B for A, then...
Clause analysis
by Bill Ball It is assumed for the purposes of this article that the reader will have a reasonable knowledge of the various grammatical elements of the English language that are known collectively as 'parts of speech'. The traditional parts of speech are verbs, adverbs, adjectives, nouns, pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions and interjections. 'Interjections' are usually included even though they are...
Causative theme in English
by David Wulstan The causative is found in Hamito-Semitic languages and in Sanskrit; but it is not often acknowledged as occurring in Indo-European languages generally. Crystal (Cambridge Enc. of Language, 93) calls the causative a tense, a description which Semitic scholars would certainly dispute. Jespersen (Essentials of Eng. Gramm., p.117), in discussing the difference between the transitive and intransitive use of verbal forms, points...