Compliment or complement?

These two words are often confused with each other, but they have quite different meanings.

If I compliment someone, I say something nice about them – “I like your new hairstyle”, for example.   A complimentary remark or statement is therefore one that shows approval.

However, a complement is something that accompanies something else, maybe offered as a gift.  For example, if my restaurant meal comes with a complementary glass of wine I would assume that it is free of charge because it was not on the original bill of fare, but something extra that the restaurant supplies to its customers.

Confusion sometimes arises when a situation can involve both meanings.  For example, in the case given above the glass of wine could arrive with a note that reads “with the compliments of the manager”.   In other words, the “complementary” (i.e. extra) glass is offered because the manager wishes to “compliment” his customers for having the good sense to eat in his restaurant!

Feeling tense?

Learners of English often have problems when deciding which tense to use. For example, what is the difference between:

David has arrived with the shopping.

and

David is arriving with the shopping.  ?

Both of these are “present” tenses in that they describe actions that are happening now, rather than in the past or the future, but the difference is that the former is saying that the action has been completed, whereas the latter implies that it is still happening.  If you like, the former is the present looking to the past but the latter is the present looking to the future.

To be technical, the former is called the present perfect – “perfect” here meaning that the action is complete.  You use “have” or “has” and the past participle of the verb, such as “have known”, “has come”, etc.

The latter is known as the continuous or progressive form of the present tense, and is formed from a part of the verb “to be” and the “-ing” (present participle) form of the verb that describes the action, as in “am going”, “was asking”, etc.

Why not practice the use of these tenses by writing pairs of sentences, one describing an action that has just ended and the other an action that is still going on, based on these examples:

Susan  (bake) a cake

John (write) a letter to the Council

It would not surprise me if the boys (play) football today

Do you have a particular problem that you would like me to discuss?  You can write a comment, or go to my website at www.welfordwrites.co.uk

Through the door

I am always careful about responding to door-to-door appeals for used clothing, as some of the people involved are criminals who have absolutely no intention of sending the donated clothes to needy people.  One giveaway is often the language used in the leaflets they distribute.  For example, this week the following was on a leaflet that landed on the doormat:

XXX is a collection company who provides people in need Eastern Eurpoean countries with affordable clothes for them and their families it provides jobs in third Eastern Eurpoean countries for those sorting the clothes for distribution. It also provides business for UK export transport companies as well as creating employment in the UK factories grading the clothes and those people collecting the bags door to door.

There are some obvious mistakes here, such as the misspelling of “European” and the lack of a sentence break in the second line.  It is not at all clear what is meant by “third Eastern Eurpoean countries”.  The last sentence runs away with itself, and actually says that the company creates the people who do the collecting!

I don’t want to encourage dubious operators by pointing out how they can deceive more people, but, on the other hand, legitimate charity workers would be trusted more if they sorted out the grammar and phrasing of their leaflets!

If you need help with writing your advertising material, you should pay a visit to www.welfordwrites.co.uk

Stationery or Stationary?

Two words that are often confused are “stationery” and “stationary”.  Their meanings are very different – the former refers to materials used for writing, such as paper and envelopes, the latter means standing still, or not moving.  The two meanings are clear in the sentence:

The car was stationary at the roadside while its owner was buying stationery in the shop.

How do you remember which one is which?  A simple way is to remember that somebody who does something is a “doer”, not a “doar”.  Somebody who sells notepaper and envelopes is a “stationer” not a “stationar”.  What he sells is therefore “stationery”, not “stationary”.

If you have a question about word usage, or any other aspect of English grammar,  why not contact me by adding a comment or visiting the website at www.welfordwrites.co.uk ?

From a student dissertation

Here is a short extract from a student dissertation, written in English by a Japanese student studying at a UK university:

These days, it is reported that increased researchers relies on the Web to find information and cite contents on the Web.  In this context, secured web reference system is needed to ensure scientific knowledge cycle.  Web archiving is one of options to avoid destruction of scholarly communication. 

Here is the same passage after I had edited it:

 These days, it is reported that researchers increasingly rely on the Web to find information and cite contents that are found there. In this context, a secure web referencing system is needed to ensure that scientific knowledge is protected. Web archiving is one of the options for avoiding the destruction of scholarly communications.

So, what are the differences?  Firstly, “increased researchers” could sound as though the researchers themselves were getting bigger!  Probably the most accurate “translation” of this would be “increased numbers of researchers”, but “researchers increasingly …” still conveys the sense of what the writer meant to say.

However, the main problem here was that the writer was unsure about when to use the “articles” in English. By this I mean “a/an” – the “indefinite article” – and “the” – the “definite article”.  Many languages do not make this distinction, but in English there is a difference between “David scored a goal” and “David scored the goal” – in the first the implication is that there could have been several goals, but in the second it is clear that there was only one. 

There are also occasions when it is best not to use an article at all. For example, “a small piece of cheese” has a slightly different meaning from “a small piece of a cheese”.  In the former, “cheese” is taken to mean cheese in general, whereas in the latter reference is being made to a whole cheese in its original state.

If you need further clarity on this issue, or if you have a problem of your own that you would like me to discuss, please comment on this post.  If you would like to know more about how Welford Writes can help people for whom English is not their first language, visit http://www.welfordwrites.co.uk

Unique

The word “unique” has a very clear dictionary definition, namely “the only one of its kind”.  It comes from the Latin “unus”, meaning “one”.  It is therefore not possible to qualify “unique” by saying that something is “very unique”, or that something is more unique than something else.

Unfortunately, American usage has tended to debase this very useful word by pretending that it means “unusual”, so that “a unique selling opportunity” means nothing more than that this is an unusual opprotinity that you would be a fool to miss.  What I want to know is, how do you express uniqueness when you have hijacked the word to mean something else?

(You can join the debate on words, grammar and the use of English by commenting on this post, or you can learn more about what Welford Writes has to offer by visiting our website at http://www.welfordwrites.co.uk)

Very interesting!

A comment on the previous post read:

“This looks very interested”

What this should have been was:

“This looks very interesting”

This sort of mistake is very common – confusing “-ed” with “-ing”, but it also reminds me of another common mistake that brings out what I said before about shades of meaning.

For one thing, the word “interest” has several meanings in English.  “Interesting” can mean “worth having a closer look at”, which is the meaning intended here.  However, interest can also mean the value that an investment gains over time, as in “this account pays five percent interest”. A third meaning is “having a connection with something in such a way that one cannot be objective about it,” as in “I have a personal interest in this matter so I cannot talk about it further”.

This also causes confusion between the words “uninterested” and “disinterested”.  They are both negative terms, and might appear to mean the same thing, but “uninterested” refers to the first meaning given above, as in “this is something that does not bother me”, whereas “disinterested” refers to the third meaning, as in “I have no personal connection with it”.   Don’t worry too much about this – even native English speakers make this mistake!

Feel free to ask any questions you have, either as a comment here, or via my website at http://www.welfordwrites.co.uk 

Shades of meaning

Here is an example of a piece of text that I edited recently, from an article written by an academic in Taiwan:

“… feminists had been demanding the end to discrimination and suppression on women in public and private arenas …”

I decided that several changes were needed, mainly because I was not happy with the use of “on” in the implied phrase “discrimination on women”.  It is also not quite the right preposition to use with “suppression”.  I therefore rewrote the text as :

“…feminists had been demanding an end to women’s discimination against and suppression of in both public and private arenas…”  (there are a couple of other minor changes as well)

This version is correct grammatically, but the customer queried it, and I’m not surprised!  To be honest, it’s a bit clumsy.  I therefore had second thoughts and came up with:

“…feminists had been demanding the end of discrimination against women in both public and private arenas…”

 This reads much better and, I would claim, says more by saying less.  I had thought about using the phrase “women’s discrimination and suppression”, but the problem then is that it could be taken to read that it was the women who were doing the discriminating!  However, as suppression is a form of discrimination, do you need both in the sentence?

What this example shows is that English allows you to express subtle shades of meaning, and how you position words next to each can change your meaning in ways that you might not have expected when you wrote them originally.

If you don’t agree with the above, or would like to ask me about a similar problem, please add a comment.  If you have a longer piece of work that you would like to me to look at, I suggest you try my website at www.welfordwrites.co.uk

Off we go!

I’ve not done this before, so please bear with me!

My name’s Welford (my surname, that is) and I write.  The sort of writing I do is a bit specific, and I’ll explain it as I go along.

It’s all about using the English language in the most effective way.  I help people to do this by taking their text and editing it, by which I mean sorting out all their mistakes in grammar, phrasing, and the rest.  In future posts I’ll show you some examples, and invite you to contact me with problems you might have.

I’ll help you for nothing if I can, but this is also how I make my living, so if you have something a bit more extensive you’ll have to try my website (www.welfordwrites.co.uk) and we’ll take it from there.

OK – that’s post number 1.  Time for lunch!