An adverb is a word that modifies (describes) a verb (he sings loudly), an adjective (very tall), another adverb (ended too quickly), or even a whole sentence (Fortunately, I had brought an umbrella). Adverbs often end in -ly, but some (such as fast) look exactly the same as their adjective counterparts.
Tom is very tall.
Hyperbole (hi-PER-buh-lee) is language that is obviously exaggerated and not meant to be taken literally. Writers often use hyperbole for emphasis or to be funny.
You can find hyperbole in plenty of English idioms: She’s asked a million questions. You could have knocked me over with a feather. He’s as quiet as a mouse. Now I’ve seen everything.
A dash is a little horizontal line that floats in the middle of a line of text (not at the bottom: that’s an underscore). It’s longer than a hyphen and is commonly used to indicate a range or a pause. Dashes are used to separate groups of words, not to separate parts of words like a hyphen does. There are three forms of dashes: em, en, and the double hyphen.
The most common types of dashes are the en dash (–) and the em dash (—).
Adjectives are words that describe the qualities or states of being of nouns: enormous, doglike, silly, yellow, fun, fast. They can also describe the quantity of nouns: many, few, millions, eleven.
Most students learn that adjectives are words which modify (describe) a noun. Adjectives do not modify verbs or adverbs or other adjectives.
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Whom should be used to refer to the object of a verb or preposition. When in doubt, try this simple trick: If you can replace the word with “he”’ or “’she,” use who. If you can replace it with “him” or “her,” use whom.
Who or whom? If you’re like most English speakers, you know that there’s a difference between these pronouns, but you aren’t sure what that difference is.
Many of us learned in school that adjectives modify nouns and that adverbs modify verbs. But as we’ve seen, adjectives can also act as complements for linking verbs. This leads to a common type of error: incorrectly substituting an adverb in place of a predicate adjective. An example you’ve probably heard before is:
Because “feel” is a verb, it seems to call for an adverb rather than an adjective.
Some types of jerk behavior are obvious. Calling names. Laughing at someone’s ideas. Stealing a coworker’s lunch out of the office refrigerator (come on, are you an animal?).
But it’s also possible to be a jerk by accident, especially in writing. Have you ever found yourself worrying that your two-sentence email will sound cold to the person on the other end? Or are you just now realizing that’s something you should worry about? (You should—warmth may be even more important than competence when it comes to establishing business relationships.)
The past perfect, also called the pluperfect, is a verb tense used to talk about actions that were completed before some point in the past.
The past perfect tense is for talking about something that happened before something else.
Pair: two of something, usually that are similar or go together. For example:
Pear: a fruit. For example:
Pare: trim (something) by cutting away its outer edges; cut the skin off of something; reduce (something) in size, extent, quantity, or number, usually in a number of small successive stages.
The difference between these two words is all about coming and going. When you immigrate, you’re coming to a new country. When you emigrate, you’re leaving your home country.
Immigrate: to move into a country from another one to stay permanently.
Emigrate: to leave the country in which one lives, especially one’s native country, to reside elsewhere.
Ever make an embarrassing grammatical mistake that other people judged you for? Of course you have; we’ve all made grammatical errors at some point. Now, imagine being stuck with one of those mistakes for the rest of your life. Believe it or not, people get misspelled or grammatically incorrect tattoos more often than you could imagine. How hard is it to do a quick Google search before permanently writing your biggest mistake ever? (Pretty difficult, apparently.)
