Will and shall

This is a tricky one! When do you use “will” and when do you use “shall”?

The rule is that, in the first person (i.e. “I” or “we”), you use “shall” when you are talking about a future action, as in “I shall be catching the bus at 4.30″; but “will” when expressing an intention to do something in the future, as in “I will come to visit, I really will!”

To make matters just that little bit more interesting, the rule is exactly the opposite with the second (“you”) and third (“he, she, it, they”) persons. So that “you shall catch the bus” is an order, not a prediction, and “he will visit you next week” is simply a statement of a future action.

How on earth do you remember which is which? Here is a little story (entirely made up I am sure) that might help:

Some years ago a Frenchman came to England on holiday. While swimming off the beach at Bournemouth he got into difficulties and waved frantically for help. However, nobody noticed him, or just thought that he was waving to a friend, and he got more and more desperate. Finally he shouted out “I will drown, I will drown, nobody shall save me!” The people who heard him, who had all been to very good schools and spoke in perfectly grammatical English, were convinced by this that he was committing suicide and allowed him to carry on drowning!

What he should have shouted was “I shall drown, I shall drown, nobody will save me”, which might have saved his life!

Maybe! 

there, their, they’re

These are three words that are pronounced the same way (or very nearly so), but the spelling is different and so is the meaning. However, many people get them confused.

“There” is an adverb that is used to indicate a place where something is, as in “I put it over there.” However, it can also be used as a pronoun, as in “There is a house in New Orleans”, where the speaker is not so much  pointing to the house as saying that the house exists and then telling you where it is.

“Their” is a possessive pronoun, in the same league as “his”, “her” and “its”. In common usage it can be used for both singular and plural owners, so that it is quite acceptable to say “The average person prefers their coffee to be hot”, whereas to be strictly accurate it should be “his or her cofffee”.

“They’re” can only mean “they are”, as in “they’re coming to stay for a week”. Remember that an apostrophe means that something is missing, in this case a space and the letter “a”.

Remembering when to use “there” and “their” is not quite so easy, unless you bear in mind that “there” goes with “where” and “here”. Just remember the question,  ”where shall I put it, here or there?” You would never write “wheir” or “heir”, so you would not write “their” in this circumstance either!

For more help with your writing of English, visit the website at www.welfordwrites.co.uk

Good or well?

To my British ears, the response of “I’m good” to the greeting “How are you” is discordant in the extreme!  As I’ve said to people who have answered in this way, “I was asking after your health, not your morals”!

So what’s wrong with using “good” in this sense instead of “well”?  Basically, the difference between the two words is that “good” (in this context) is an adjective and “well” is an adverb.  Remember that an adjective is a word that qualifies a noun (as in “a large house”) and an averb qualifies a verb (as in “he fought bravely”).  Many adverbs end in “ly” but this is not a universal rule, and “well” is one of the exceptions.

 Therefore, if I ask you how you are, I am expecting a qualification of a verb, namely the verb “to be”, not a noun.  You should therefore use an adverb in your reply, not an adjective.

Just to confuse matters, “good” can also be used as a noun as well as an adjective, so there can be cases where “he did good” is correct!  For example, if the context is the life story of a saint, you would not be surprised to find the statement, “throughout his life, he did good wherever he went” (as opposed to the biblical “he has done evil in my sight”).

However, when a sportsperson, in an interview,  says “we did good today” you can be pretty sure that they are not talking about how they have benefitted society at large, but should have said “we did well”!

Feel free to comment on this post, or to ask a question about some aspect of English grammar or usage that puzzles you.  You can get more help with your written English via the website www.welfordwrites.co.uk

-ice or -ise?

Some of the problems faced by the learner of English arise from differences between British and American usage – and there are of course other varieties of English such as Australian and South African.  I am British, and so therefore my advice and what I practise are based on British usage.

The last sentence above shows what I mean.  In American usage, “practise” is commonly used in cases where British usage would be “practice”, but in British English both forms are used.

So what is the difference?  Basically, the “-ice” ending indicates a noun, whereas “-ise” is used for a verb.  I can advise you (verb) to take my advice (noun), which is to practise (verb) your English practice (noun).   Think of “ice” as being a thing (i.e. a noun), so a word ending in “ice” will also be a noun.

But beware!  This rule only applies in the very few cases where both word forms exist – I cannot actually think of any apart from the two mentioned above, can you?  It is not the case that a word ending in “-ice” is always a noun (“entice” is a verb), and the “-ise” ending is also used in British English for some nouns, such as “exercise”, which can be either a noun or a verb – “keep exercising at those exercises!” 

Feel free to offer a comment, perhaps to suggest a point that I could include in a future post.  This post is the result of just such a comment.

If you would like my help in more general terms, such as to proofread/edit your longer pieces of English text, please visit my website at www.welfordwrites.co.uk

Less or Fewer?

Supermarkets are fond of displaying a sign over their express queue that reads “6 items or less”, although some have now realised that it should be “6 items or fewer”.  So what’s the difference?

When deciding which to use, ask yourself whether the thing or things under discussion are counted or measured.  

If you are asking the assistant at the deli counter to give you a piece of cheese that is smaller than the piece she has just offered you, you should ask for less cheese, because this is something that is measured – by weight in this instance.  It would make no sense to say “please give me fewer cheese”.

However, if she has given you too many olives, you would say “please give me fewer olives”, because olives are things you can count.

Be careful when you are dealing with collective nouns, such as “people”.  You can count people, so it is correct to say “there are fewer people in France than in India” and wrong to say “there are less people”.

The golden rule here is – Measure Less, Count Fewer.  If you can remember the line from Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan” that goes “Through caverns measureless to man”, you won’t go far wrong! 

 Do you need more help with your written English?  Pay a visit to www.welfordwrites.co.uk and find out about the services that are available to you.

Its and It’s

It’s a problem that arises because of its use, or not, of the apostrophe.  This is something that confuses many people, and it’s not just learners of English who fall victim to its difficulties.

I have used both “it’s” and “its” twice each in the opening paragraph, to show you how they differ in meaning.  A teacher I had many years ago used to say that an apostrophe was a tombstone for a departed letter – a bit morbid, perhaps, but in most cases this is true. 

An apostrophe is used when a word has been shortened by leaving out one or more letters, such as in “Lucy’s car’s crashed and she’s been taken to hospital”.  In the case of “car’s” and “she’s” it is easy to work out what is missing, as the full version would be “car has” and “she has”.  However, “Lucy’s” is an indication that what follows is something owned by Lucy, so what could be missing?  If you go back a few hundred years it was common for people to write “William his book” rather than “William’s book”, so “hi” is missing; but Lucy is a woman, so changing “Lucy her car” to “Lucy’s car” means that my old teacher’s tombstone theory needs a bit of tweaking!

Going back to “it’s” and “its”, the apostrophe is still a tombstone, because the full version is “it is”, and you should usually use the full version when writing anything official or formal, except when reporting what someone has said.  “Its” is a possessive pronoun,  as are “his” and “hers”.

If you wonder which to use, remember that you would never write “hi’s” or “her’s” as a possessive pronoun, so you don’t use “it’s” either.

Also remember that “it’s” is always short for “it is” or “it has” (as in “it’s been great to meet you”), and never short for “it his”! 

You can get help with your written English by making use of the services of Welford Writes at www.welfordwrites.co.uk, and you are also welcome to suggest topics for this blog by leaving a comment.

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

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