Victoria Harrison

6 Major Rules of Grammar You May Not Know In a world where people do not go a single day without reading, whether it’s a sales letter, a roadside billboard or a cereal box, never has there been a greater need to ensure that you write and speak good English. It is no longer a good excuse, (if it ever was) to say that English is not your first language as it is expected that English being a universal language is one that everyone should endeavor to learn. Poor grammar on the basis of its not being relevant to your line of work is also no longer excusable. Indeed it is undeniable that even the slightest public display of a weak grasp of grammar could impact negatively on any person, no matter how intelligent such a person really is. Statistics show that out of 7.8 billion people in the world, 1.35 billion people speak English Language. Now that’s a significant number of people. In line with the age-old saying that whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing well, it would make a world of difference in our written and spoken communication, if we remember these major rules of grammar. 1. Never Use a Double Negative: This is a situation where two negative terms are used in a sentence. To some people, sentences like “I didn't steal nothing.” and “She couldn’t find it nowhere” may sound perfectly normal. Indeed this is common amongst some Americans. However, it is not grammatically correct. This is because the use of two negative words together usually turns the sentence into a positive one. This may confuse some readers and is generally seen as poor grammar. It should be noted that there are instances where double negatives are not incorrect (see what we did there?) or a mistake. For example, “I am not unaware of your efforts.” In this instance, double negative is used by a speaker or writer who intends a positive meaning. 2. Adjectival Order Matters: It could appear a bit clumsy when you do not know where in a sentence full of adjectives, to put the words “large” or “grey” or “belligerent”. Clearly, this can be very confusing for most people. An example is “The hippo is a belligerent, large, grey mammal.” Here, the adjectives are arranged in the order of size, color and opinion. The English adjectival order suggests that in a sentence with various adjectives, they should be arranged based on number/quantity, opinion/quality, size, age, shape, color, origin, modifier and purpose. To help you remember this order, we suggest you keep in mind the popular mnemonic OSASCOMP. Hopefully, next time you are faced with a tricky set of adjectives, you’ll be just fine. 3. Use 'who' instead of 'that': In a sentence, when referring to someone, you should use 'who' not 'that'. This is because in English language, 'that' is typically used to refer to objects and non-human subjects, while ‘who’ is always used to refer to a person. An example of a wrong use of ‘that’ is, "Peter is the boy that I called to lift the bucket." It should be, “Peter is the boy who I called to lift the bucket.” 4. Beware of words with the same pronunciation but different spellings: These kinds of words abound in the English language. For example, they're/their/there and you're/your. This still confuses even native English speakers. Though these words have the same pronunciation, they do not have the same spelling or meaning. In fact, sometimes, they altar the meaning of a sentence if used wrongly. 5. Understand subject-verb agreement: Too many times, people make the mistake of using the wrong verb conjugation for the subjects in their sentence. This is because they do not understand subject-verb agreement. The rule is a singular noun takes a singular verb and a plural noun takes a plural verb. This sounds simple enough on the surface but can actually get easily complicated. An example is, "John, along with all his brothers, is travelling to Japan tomorrow." The subject here is "John" not "all his brothers". Therefore the singular verb should be used not the plural verb. The plural verb would have made the sentence, "John, along with all his brothers are travelling to Japan tomorrow. This is wrong because if you remove "all his brothers", you’ll be left with just "John" which is singular. The verb must always agree with the subject. The important thing is to identify the subject in the sentence and let that guide you. 6. Pay attention to your tenses: You may have heard things like, "I would have wrote you a letter." or "She had drank too much wine." These are not correct. No matter the sentence, tenses will always be important. In the earlier statements, "I would have wrote you a letter" should be "I would have written you a letter". The reason for this is that, whenever an auxiliary verb exists in a sentence, the succeeding verb must be in the past participle. These and many other rules of grammar are what sometimes make the difference between badly written content and finely worded content. To be confident in your use of grammar, it takes much practice. Alternatively, you also have the option of employing the services of professional writers who are trained in the use of grammar and will help convey your message correctly and effectively.