Useful guides
The KES useful guides to English
Thanks to the support of a few of the Society's 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...
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...
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....
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...
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',...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
'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 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...
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...
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...
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...
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...