Hello, it’s been a while, so I finally have a new article! Today, I’m exploring a language problem that is tricky to navigate: computer language assistants giving inaccurate advice. That is, when you have autocorrect or grammar assistant programs that flag things either unnecessarily or incorrectly.

I’ve compiled a short list of what I find to be the most common examples to help you avoid problems with this, so you can use language software tips more effectively.

What’s wrong with language assistant software?

Spellcheck and grammar assistants can be very handy, and I often use them for additional, final proof-reading checks – but I’m very careful about which corrections I accept. For example, this article is about 1,500 words long; I gave it one edit myself and ran it through Grammarly to receive 47 suggestions. Of these, 20 were actually specified “corrections”, and the others just language tips, which are of little interest to me. Of the 20 corrections, I found 5 useful, but only 1 was an objective error (a missing word). The remaining “corrections” were suggestions for commas or for verb or preposition changes. Considering I accepted 4 out of 19 of these, you can see the suggestions weren’t really “correct” for me.

This is about typical with what I find for my documents, though I am a professional writer and editor, so I’d imagine for others there may be a higher rate of useful corrections. If you can tell which ones to accept.

Every extra error I can identify is invaluable, but to get those corrections it’s essential that I’m able to identify how 75% of the suggestions aren’t appropriate. Mostly, the suggestions aren’t wrong, but are just unnecessary, and may slightly change my meaning or personal style. In the worst cases, they could actually introduce errors.

The problem is that language is an ever-changing and flexible thing, as we often discuss on here, whilst computer programs follow strict rules. It’s dangerous to rely on these too much, as they operate on a basis that all writing should be the same – that it should follow a particular, “correct” form. In its most extreme, this can strip writing of its intended effect or meaning.

Mostly, though, this is more of a sentence-level issue, where you have to consider whether or not the computer program’s tweaks are relevant – and consistent. To help keep you vigilant about the suggestions, here are 7 things that I notice often come up.

 1. Commas

By far the most common suggestion I get from computer language assistants is to add or remove commas. This is usually based on specific conjunction rules, pointing to situations where you should always or never have a comma alongside a conjunction. I disagree with using commas this way, as their particular use depends on how we can best present the information of any given sentence (as is true of all these points, actually).

For reference, I have a whole series of articles on commas, which you can find curated here. There is a running theme throughout that a comma’s main purpose is to aid with clarity. Software can’t necessarily decide that for you; sometimes, a reliance on specific structures will mean “correct” comma placement helps, but in most cases I would assess the accuracy of your commas based on your own intended meanings.

2. Prepositions

As with commas, computer software tends to try and fit preposition use into rigid rules, in this case based on expected conjugations. Anyone who has studied English will know, however, that the patterns for preposition use (and by association also particles from phrasal verbs) are terribly complex and often very specific.

Mostly, this is seen with suggestions that you change a preposition to a more appropriate one, or remove it. I frequently get told to correct “look on” to “look at”. This is a minor shift, but it’s telling that the software assumes “at” is always the most appropriate preposition for “look”. The problem with a correction like this is that “look at” may almost always be technically “correct” here, it’s not necessarily conveying the exact connection I want.

I also find these programs like to simplify longer or combined prepositions, such as changing “onto” to “on” or “into” to “in”, again stripping some nuance. Words such as “onto” and “into” exist to provide specific detail, which the computer, concerned only with correctness, does not necessarily appreciate.

3. Isolated Verb Conjugation

Certain structures seem to confuse computer software’s understanding of intended verb uses, and you may see suggestions for changing tenses or subject conjugation that don’t make sense in the wider context. One that I often encounter is where the program expects a particular type of structure to be associated with rules, and suggests a present tense verb, no matter what tense the rest of the document is in. This is more likely to occur where you have shorter, isolated sentences.

On the other hand, correction software can also get confused about subject conjugation when dealing with lists or longer sentences that separate the subject from the verb. Be particularly careful where you have noun phrases for subjects, and especially where you have multiple noun phrases, as this can make it hard to keep track of plurals. This is an area that can be tricky when writing and editing your own work, and computer programs aren’t necessarily any better at it than us!

4. Emphatic and Stylised Language

In general, autocorrect software is always looking to make your language more efficient and simpler, assuming simple is clearest. Whilst there is some merit in this as a starting point for editing, if followed too strictly it can restructure information you want presented in a specific way, and it may affect tone or emphasis.

Modern language use has gone towards an attitude that plain, simple language is best, but there is a time and place for varying from this. Computers cannot decide what those times and places are, so will simply tell you, for example, to remove extra adverbs or shorten long sentences.

You’ll see this in many different ways, but one of the most common is when language assistants suggest removing emphatic adverbs such as “still”, “just”, “really” and “very”. Sometimes these will be filler words that we can do without and sometimes they can completely change the emphasis of a sentence. Be careful to decide for yourself whether they are needed.

5. Dialogue Tags & Punctuation Styles

Computer language assistants sometimes make completely incorrect suggestions for specific bits of punctuation, such as dialogue tags (i.e. when using quote marks). A common example I find is when dealing with interruptions in dialogue, or listed items using quotes (in both cases, not using the expected full sentences enclosed by quotation marks). This is a matter of style which should be consistent within one document but may not easily be called correct or incorrect in general. For example:

• “I might interrupt some dialogue” – using dashes – “like this.”
• “Or you could also show an interruption,” with commas, “like this.”

Computer programs won’t necessarily see what you’re going for here, and can make some very strange suggestions, either to end or combine sentences or use different styles (such as replacing commas with dashes or vice versa).

It’s important in these cases to be aware of your style choices and stick to them.

6. Sentence Fragments & Adaptive Rules

There are times in writing where we reject typical rules to use grammatically incomplete sentences, often because they break rules, drawing attention to themselves. This is always going to depend on specific circumstances and personal nuance, and as such is always going to prove difficult for computers to master. I feel the software is actually getting better at appreciating this, and doesn’t always flag fragments, but for the most part if you venture from the rules, you will get warnings.

With sentence fragments in particular, this could lead to a variety of suggested solutions, including punctuation, verb, noun or preposition tweaks – all of which may detract from or completely change the intended meaning. Beware!

7. Vocabulary

Lastly, but most obviously, computer programs sometimes try to offer “better” words to improve your writing. This is not to be confused with correcting words, where you have a mistaken meaning, but is again a symptom of the rule-based system where certain types of language are considered to be clearer or more appropriate than others. Where software offers you words with similar meaning, I’d tread very carefully over exactly why it wants you to make a change. It may just be a case of the program trying to make language fit expected patterns. As with all the cases above, it can also mistake your intended meaning and try to change the sentence to fit its own ideas. Grammarly once told me to change “her behind” to “her hind legs”, which would’ve taken things in a very unusual direction.

The only good reason I can think of for automated synonym suggestions is where you might’ve used a particularly obscure or complex word that might be clearer simplified, but this is a personal choice to make that can depend on the context.

That’s my list for now, which I hope helps highlight areas for caution with computer language assistants. The software is useful and is definitely improving, but I do encourage you to keep questioning it, and there are plenty of other areas for caution I’m sure you’ve all encountered. Feel free to share your own experiences in the comments!

Season’s Greetings one and all! We’re reaching the end of the year and are into holiday season so I want to share a quick message for everyone, wishing you all the very best for the end of this year, and for the new year to come.

I also have my usual selection of Christmas-themed English learning articles to share if you want to make this educational!

Times are tough for a lot of people at the moment, so I hope you’ll have a chance to rest and find some goodness in the coming weeks; I’m personally always fond of seeing decorations as they show such creativity and light in the darkest days of the year. Take care of yourselves and your loved ones, and keep on going!

As I explained a short while ago, my books and this website have had a downward turn this year (you can read about it here), but I’m still here, and will be reviewing my next steps in early 2026. The main challenge is keeping the mailing list going, which has a rather expensive monthly cost – but I’ll either find a way to make it more affordable or make an effort to put out new material to justify it. I’ll be looking at it with fresh eyes in January, as for now I intend to take a short break!

Treat Yourself…

My free book series is in its last days at the moment, so if you haven’t seen it yet I still have a December treat available, as you can get Advanced Writing Skills for Students of English free until the end of the year!

And if you want some more from me to keep you occupied, here’s a fresh round-up of my seasonal articles from years past.

Seasonal English Learning Articles

• The Big List of Christmas Vocabulary
• Learn the Origins of 12 Christmas Words
• 6 Christmas Songs for Practising Listening
• Festive Christmas Language (Mixed Tenses Exercise)
• The Christmas Mess (Tenses Exercise)
• The Gift of Time (Tenses Exercise)
• The True Treasure of Christmas (Phrasal Verbs Exercise)
• Kate Skates at Christmas (Phrasal Verbs Exercise)
• Learn about the impact of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol on the English language

Happy holidays everyone and may your New Year by filled with hope and positivity!

Hello from ELB! It has been a little while, so I want to address my increasingly irregular updates. It’s with great regret that over these past few months I’ve been unable to continue my monthly new articles, which I’d otherwise managed without fail for 12 years.

Unfortunately, I think it’s necessary to announce a change, and to admit I just can’t keep producing regular, effective ELT content right now. But I also want to offer some hope through all this, as the bulk of material I have managed to produce in those 12 years is still here, still freely available, and is going nowhere.

What’s changed?

I started ELB in 2013 with the intention of sharing the tips I was using in my teaching, and gradually expanded this to cover tips relating to my writing and editing work, as my professional focus drifted into these areas. As I’ve done less teaching and tutoring over the last 6 years or so, I’ve had less material to share, but I kept finding things to dip into because the site continued to be so popular, and I wanted to keep helping people who came looking for it.

Two things have made this much more difficult. The first is that my own professional circumstances have taken me into areas that feel much less relevant to ELT, so it’s harder for me to focus on material worth sharing here. The book market and online advertising overall are forever shifting and I’m sad to say I can no longer make a reliable income from my books – this year, I’m looking at sales as low as when I first turned to self-publishing full-time, about 8 years ago. Necessarily, I’ve had to adapt, and that’s taken me away from here (and I’d terribly aware of not having been able to produce the books I wanted to for this site).

Secondly, and far more discouragingly, though, my website traffic has seen a huge decline in the past year or so, especially over the past six months. This has coincided with the rise of reliance on AI in search engines, and in writing overall, so that search engines no longer send visitors to original articles, instead presenting their own (often erroneous) AI summaries that discourage onward website travel. And when people do click through to a website, the ones that top search engines are now more likely to be ones that recycle others’ content.

Whereas before it was good practice to release a monthly article to encourage more people to visit my website, now it feels increasingly unlikely that I’ll reach an audience with my writing. For 10 years, I was steadily growing an audience, reaching more people with time, but now it’s the opposite, with visitor numbers rapidly declining.

The situation is actually a lot worse than just reaching fewer people, though, because the proliferation of AI tools that scrape and copy existing writing without any legal recourse means that when I put effort into producing any original material, it’s likely to be stolen and reproduced by someone else rather than linked back to my own site. The AI summaries in search engines, after all, present this entire process in miniature.

So, while I appreciate there are still a lot of you reading, as it’s costing me more time and money for diminishing results, and especially when what I write here is likely to be stolen anyway, I’ve had to focus on other commitments. In fairness, not wanting to pile all this on the shifting landscape of the internet, this has converged to make it too hard for me to give this site the focus it needs.

What Does this Mean for ELB?

This may all sound rather bleak, but I have no intention of shutting this website down – it does still reach people. Right now, I’m seeing the same number of visitors in a week that I used to see in a day, which is much fewer, but not insignificant.

The website itself isn’t hugely expensive to keep up, though the newsletter is a bit of an outgoing, especially when I fail to send anything. I’m very grateful for my Patreon supporters, but this has never covered the costs of the site, and it’s probably only fair that I start considering shutting down the subscription platform, if I’m not producing more material.

But I do have plenty of existing material left to offer, and over the next few months I want to send out something more substantial to my loyal and eager readers, before I review where I’m at and come up with a fresh plan for 2026. So, on a more positive note…

Free Books for All!

I have four books available to help foreign learners, and I want them to reach as many people as possible while I still have some semblance of a platform to reach. Seeing as it’s become so hard to even get people to read the free articles on my website, for the next four months I will cycle through each book as a free gift, with a little introduction and retrospective on each.

Next month, I am going to offer the complete book of Word Order in English Sentences for free on the web store (possibly with a donation option, if anyone feels kind!).

I will follow this with the other books: The English Tenses Practical Grammar Guide will be free in October, the Exercise Book in November, and Advanced Writing Skills in December.

I’ll announce each of these through the newsletter, so you’ll see it first here. If I can find time, I’ll also try and keep more of the archive messages going, to revisit old content, and following these releases I might dip into some broader retrospective looks at the archives, to curate the existing material. There’s so much still up on the site, I’d love for people to keep discovering it.

I’m not sure where I’ll take things after that, but it feels like a better use of my newsletter and my money to be sharing my books, even if for free, than to keep paying for my site and my email list with nothing new being shared.

It just feels like there’s so much greed, and hate, in the world at the moment, which is only growing as it actively suppresses what used to be a much freer and more generous online experience. My platform here might be diminishing, but as long as people are still visiting, I’d like ELB to be somewhere that continues to give a little hope, and a little help, to anyone who wanders across it.

Have a lovely day – and keep learning!

In English, we can indicate quoted text with either single quotes, ‘–’ or double quotes, “–”.

Typically it is expected that you use one style or the other, but they can also be combined. This can lead to some confusion as to exactly when you should use double or single quotation marks, and I see writers coming up with their own rules for what type of quotes should use which style.

So here is a brief guide to choosing between single and double quotation marks.

Should you use single or double quotation marks?

As a matter of style, there are only really two questions to answer to decide whether to use single or double quotation marks in your writing:

1. Is there an established style that already decides this?
2. If not, which style do you prefer?

The first question may be decided by a publishing house, company style, or even just a previous piece of writing which you want to be consistent with. You may even, for example, enter a correspondence and want to match the style of the person you are writing to, to be clear.

There is a regional consideration you might make, in that double quotations are more common in US English, and single quotations are more common in the UK English, but this is not a strict rule. My personal preference, in fact, is for double quotation marks, despite writing otherwise in UK English, for the simple reason that it feels more immediately clear to me, with less room for confusion with apostrophes.

If you don’t have an example to follow already, however, it really is your choice. Which looks better to you?

Once you have chosen a style, the main thing to bear in mind is to be consistent, and not switch between the two, otherwise the text can become confusing. This should be the same style throughout whatever you’re working on – a short story, an entire essay, an entire book.

That said, this website is actually a bad example of consistent quotation marks. Each article should have either single or double quotation marks, but some articles use one style and some the other. This is because the articles were all written separately and the choice varied depending on my mood on the day. I’d recommend not writing this way; I normally only write with double quotation marks, so I’m not sure why some articles here are different!

Anyway, once you have chosen a style, you may still need to use the other style – but there are particular rules for that.

How do you use both single and quotation marks?

Once you have decided upon whether to use single or double quotation marks, the simple rule to stick to is to always use that style for any quoted text, whether it is dialogue, a questionable or emphasised word or phrase, or a quote from writing (if indicated with quotation marks and not another style, e.g. italics). I sometimes see writers mixing this up and using single quotes for dialogue and double for quoted names, for example, which is inconsistent and should be avoided.

However, you do sometimes need to mix in both styles, for one particular reason: to show that something is quoted within another quote. In other words, when you have something quoted that includes another quote (such as dialogue reporting someone else’s direct dialogue). We switch styles to clearly indicate this, so whichever style you have for the text overall, the other style is used for quotes within a quote. For example, these are the two most correct forms:

• Billy said, ‘I heard mother call it a “carrot cake”.’ (single quotes, double within)
• Billy said, “I heard mother call it a ‘carrot cake’.” (double quotes, single within)

(A brief additional note: as ‘carrot cake’ is a phrase and not a full sentence, the full stop belongs outside the single quotes, but this is a regional style. In US English, punctuation typically comes inside quotation marks even if the punctuation is not part of the quoted phrase.)

With this in mind, you should easily be able to decide whether a particular quote within your text needs single or double quotation marks by sticking consistently to either of these two main rules:

• Single quotation marks, double within
• Double quotation marks, single within

This is one of the first style rules I establish for any document I am working on, and I suggest you do the same! I hope this helps you produce consistent quotation marks, and do let me know if you have any questions.

It’s October, which means it’s time for another Halloween-themed article!

This year, I’ve gone with a tenses/reading exercise again; you can enjoy this just for the reading practice, to see some Halloween English in use, or you can test yourself on the most appropriate tenses to complete the story.

The Brown House Ghoul – English Tenses Exercise

Complete the story by choosing the most appropriate tenses form for the verbs, in the spaces provided. The answers are given below.

They say that Brown House is haunted. It (1) __________ (to stand) on top of a tall hill at the edge of town. No one (2) __________ (to live) there for forty years. But last week, on Halloween, Timmy decided to go and see for himself.

Before going out, Timmy told his parents he (3) __________ (to go) trick or treating. He used a white sheet to dress up as a ghost. After going down the main street (where he did pick up some treats), he took a side street out of town. He quickly climbed the hill and observed the house.

Brown House (4) __________ (to look) very tall, with lots of broken windows and uneven turrets. The wind was blowing, so the trees nearby swayed against it. They (5) __________ (to make) scratching noises while he watched. Timmy was scared, but pretended not to be.

Timmy climbed over the small fence and found a window that had been boarded up long ago. Now, the boards were partly broken, so he could sneak in. He climbed through and found himself in a dark, dusty room with old furniture covered in cobwebs. There was a terrible smell of something rotten. Timmy (6) __________ (to think) maybe he should leave, as this was a bad idea, but before he could go a loud groan came from somewhere deep in the house. He jumped in fear.

When the groan came again, he paused and listened more carefully. (7) __________ (to be / it) just a pipe? He could not leave without more evidence of the supernatural.

Timmy continued through a chilly hallway to an open cellar doorway. He flinched at the sound of another groan, but continued. In the doorway, he looked down a tall flight of stairs which descended into darkness. Whatever was making the noise, it (8) __________ (to come) from down there.

He waited, to be sure it was quiet again, then trod down the stairs, cringing at the sound of the steps. He saw a flicker of light, deep in the cellar, and (9) __________ (to freeze). There was a figure, hunched over a fire, dark and knobbly. A ghoul!

“Ah!” Timmy cried in fear and the figure turned towards him. He saw a terrible gnarled face, old and warty, and he ran. He tripped over the steps but kept going. He charged through the house and threw himself through the boarded window. Outside, he sprinted towards the fence, and tried to jump it – but was stuck! His ghost outfit was caught and he couldn’t get free. He looked back and shrieked.

The big, creepy figure (10) __________ (to come) out of the house, very tall, very dark!

Timmy tore at his ghost costume, almost free, and fell off the fence with a bump. His knee hurt, so he was slow to get up, and suddenly a shadow swept over him. The ghoul was right there!

“Don’t eat me!” Timmy pleaded and the monster laughed. Not a mean laugh, nor monstrous. Timmy looked up again, uncertainly. The thing standing over him was not a monster but a man, he saw, wrapped in many layers of clothing. The person held out a hand, and in it was Timmy’s trick-or-treat bucket, which he (11) __________ (to drop). Timmy carefully took it back and the man smiled.

He understood then, that this person was merely living in the house, hidden, where no one went because they were scared it was haunted. But Timmy asked, quietly, “Why (12) __________ (you / to groan)? Are you hurt?”

The man shrugged and shook his head. “Just having a groan. (13) __________ (you / to tell) anyone I’m here?”

Timmy considered this. He (14) __________ (to brave) the haunted house and revealed its secret, but this man did not seem to be doing any harm. And it would be a better story if he told everyone there was a ghoul. He shook his head and held up his trick-or-treat bucket again, to offer a sweet. The man smiled and took a treat.

They still say that Brown House is haunted.

The Brown House Ghoul Answers

Below is the complete passage with the verbs in their correct forms. Some of these are flexible, but these are what I considered the most appropriate forms, considering the context and where verbs might be ongoing/interrupted.

They say that Brown House is haunted. It (1) stands on top of a tall hill at the edge of town. No one (2) has lived there for forty years. But last week, on Halloween, Timmy decided to go and see for himself.

Before going out, Timmy told his parents he (3) was going trick or treating. He used a white sheet to dress up as a ghost. After going down the main street (where he did pick up some treats), he took a side street out of town. He quickly climbed the hill and observed the house.

Brown House (4) looked very tall, with lots of broken windows and uneven turrets. The wind was blowing, so the trees nearby swayed against it. They (5) were making scratching noises while he watched. Timmy was scared, but pretended not to be.

Timmy climbed over the small fence and found a window that had been boarded up long ago. Now, the boards were partly broken, so he could sneak in. He climbed through and found himself in a dark, dusty room with old furniture covered in cobwebs. There was a terrible smell of something rotten. Timmy (6) thought maybe he should leave, as this was a bad idea, but before he could go a loud groan came from somewhere deep in the house. He jumped in fear.

When the groan came again, he paused and listened more carefully. (7) Was it just a pipe? He could not leave without more evidence of the supernatural.

Timmy continued through a chilly hallway to an open cellar doorway. He flinched at the sound of another groan, but continued. In the doorway, he looked down a tall flight of stairs which descended into darkness. Whatever was making the noise, it (8) was coming from down there.

He waited, to be sure it was quiet again, then trod down the stairs, cringing at the sound of the steps. He saw a flicker of light, deep in the cellar, and (9) froze. There was a figure, hunched over a fire, dark and knobbly. A ghoul!

“Ah!” Timmy cried in fear and the figure turned towards him. He saw a terrible gnarled face, old and warty, and he ran. He tripped over the steps but kept going. He charged through the house and threw himself through the boarded window. Outside, he sprinted towards the fence, and tried to jump it – but was stuck! His ghost outfit was caught and he couldn’t get free. He looked back and shrieked.

The big, creepy figure (10) was coming out of the house, very tall, very dark!

Timmy tore at his ghost costume, almost free, and fell off the fence with a bump. His knee hurt, so he was slow to get up, and suddenly a shadow swept over him. The ghoul was right there!

“Don’t eat me!” Timmy pleaded and the monster laughed. Not a mean laugh, nor monstrous. Timmy looked up again, uncertainly. The thing standing over him was not a monster but a man, he saw, wrapped in many layers of clothing. The person held out a hand, and in it was Timmy’s trick-or-treat bucket, which he (11) had dropped. Timmy carefully took it back and the man smiled.

He understood then, that this person was merely living in the house, hidden, where no one went because they were scared it was haunted. But Timmy asked, quietly, “Why (12) were you groaning? Are you hurt?”

The man shrugged and shook his head. “Just having a groan. (13) Are you going to tell anyone I’m here?”

Timmy considered this. He (14) had braved the haunted house and revealed its secret, but this man did not seem to be doing any harm. And it would be a better story if he told everyone there was a ghoul. He shook his head and held up his trick-or-treat bucket again, to offer a sweet. The man smiled and took a treat.

They still say that Brown House is haunted.

As always let me know if you have any thoughts or questions!

As I mentioned in my last article on the difference between objective and subjective, I’d like to share some thoughts on when language rules should be strictly followed and when they may be flexible. This is essentially the difference between objective (provably true) rules and subjective (personally preferred) techniques.

In short, there are some areas of English that should be observed closely, to ensure the best understanding, but others may be varied, to fit different purposes or show specific personality.

Questions of Style

A good part of this issue is covered by the matter of style in English; that is all those areas of writing that may be flexibly decided. I’ve already got an article about this taken from my Advanced Writing Skills book, so please read that here.

In summary, style is the term we use for decisions made on variations in language. This can include the way we use punctuation, spelling, or the presentation of writing. Style covers regional variations, capitalisation, the way we write times, and much more. By establishing style rules, we decide a consistent pattern of English for specific written documents. This isn’t to say these decisions are objectively correct overall, but they should be consistent within that piece of writing.

For example, in a piece of fiction if we decide to show dialogue with double quotation marks, it would then be incorrect, within that document, to use single quotation marks. Why is this important? Because if we establish a consistent pattern, deviations from it suggest a different function.

However, forming decisions over style are clearer in writing, where it may be done as a formal process by writers and editors. In everyday English, such decisions aren’t necessarily made consciously, so we find even more variety. Style also tends to account for things that won’t necessarily affect understanding: it’s more about the pattern and display of English.

It may sometimes consider grammatical quirks, but not to the degree that we encounter them in spoken English.

Language Rules or Language Patterns?

In everyday English, our variations of language are established through learning in schools, through dictionaries, via teachers and (perhaps most of all!) through communication with peers. Attempts are made to cement the rules of language, but there will always be exceptions in practice, because everyone adapts the way they communicate.

This is because, quite simply, different people express themselves differently – and that’s a good thing. To go a bit deeper, though, it’s also a case of different people using the same tools for different jobs, and interpreting their uses differently.

Yet there is a balance to be struck here between two conflicting ideas: on the one hand, language needs to be as homogenous as possible for the best possibility of wider understanding. That is to say, if we all use the same rules consistently, the same spellings and definitions and grammar patterns, then everyone will understand each other more effectively. On the other hand, however, language must be open to interpretation to adapt to changing times, or the uses of different cultures, and sometimes rigid rules can actually restrict effective communication.

There are rules that I believe are important to stick to, but even these I might alter if it fit the style for a specific piece of writing. Part of the reason for this is that almost everything, when it comes to effective communication, depends on context. Within given contexts, there are areas where we can say it is objectively important to maintain certain rules, but in different situations this might not be true.

As such, I have one simple rule myself to decide whether or not any given rule is objectively justifiable: is an error here likely to lead to misunderstanding/miscommunication?

If breaking a ‘rule’ overall will not cause misunderstanding, and creates a variation in English that may be unconventional but will likely be understood, I’d suggest the ‘rule’ presents a helpful pattern (i.e. a common/popular way of doing it) rather than a strict rule.

On the other hand, we have to consider exactly what might cause misunderstanding/miscommunication in any given situation. Comma usage overall is a good example of this in practice: we have certain ‘rules’ about where commas should appear, and some of these will directly affect the understanding of a sentence, for example a comma before ‘who’ can establish if a clause is defining or non-defining. At other times, commas might just help break up a long sentence in positions where they’re not always required. It’s perfectly possible, though, that in some circumstances not including a comma with a non-defining clause will make no difference in how it’s understood, or a seemingly flexible comma might be absolutely necessary to break up a long sentence that could otherwise be misunderstood.

You might guess that this a topic that could be expanded to discuss pretty much most of English and its details, so I think I’ll have to revisit it again and expand on some examples (honestly, I could probably write a book on this). For now, though, I hope these thoughts go a little way towards encouraging a little extra consideration of the nature of language rules…

“For ever after” is a phrase I found curious recently, as it highlights some interesting points about how English works as a flexible, evolving language.

The phrase can be written in two different ways, changing the meanings of the words, with no real agreement on the “correct” form. Both forms roughly mean the same thing, and as such the way people say, write or understand this phrase is likely based on a chosen style, not a difference in intention or a logically assessed reasoning.

So, let’s explore the differences, the shifts in popularity and what that means for the way we look at such inconsistencies in English.

First up, what does the phrase mean? “For ever after” is an adverbial phrase (often regarded as an idiom) that essentially means “for all time from this point on”. It’s similar to the classic fairy tale ending “happily ever after”, or the word “forevermore”.

For example:

• They got married and lived together for ever after.
• The countries signed a treaty and were at peace forever after.

How should we write “for ever after”?

Let’s break down the two ways “for ever after” can be written. I’ve used the form that clearly separates the words so far, but this is not the one I’m most familiar with; I would typically write “forever after” myself, which is why I wanted to look into the phrase in more detail. We can essentially see this as using one of two different adverbials:

• for [ever after]
• [forever] after

As in “happily ever after”, “ever after” is an idiomatic phrase meaning “everything from this point on”; the first option makes sense in the regard “for the duration of everything from this point on”. There’s also a case to be made, somewhat loosely, that we could even write “everafter”, for a third option, “for everafter”, but that is not common or really accepted. Over time it might become more popular if “ever after” develops into a true compound word.

On the other hand, “forever after” uses the adverb “forever” to mean “all time”, in the same regard, “all the time after this point”. However, I’m picking at this a bit to show some sort of difference – it’s hard to actually form a definition for either form that wouldn’t work for the other. So we have different component words with slightly different meanings, but result in basically the same outcome.

What is the most common way to say “for ever after”?

While we can already fairly say either option is acceptable, what ultimately dictates “correct” English (that being the most easily accepted or understood) is popular use. Logically, I think there’s a strong case that “for ever after” makes most sense as it applies the idiomatic phrasing. Most likely the phrase will be used to affect that kind of idiomatic expression. However, “forever after” feels more right to me personally, mostly as it emphasises that longevity. Or maybe just because it looks neater to have two words instead on one. Either way, it’s perfectly acceptable to go on gut feeling with this, or with whatever you were first taught, or like the look of, and I think that says quite a lot about how the English language often works. No doubt people would argue for one form over another, but there’s no way to definitively settle on a superior, meaning we must accept both.

What we can now do, though, is look at the statistics of usage for more insights. One of the tools I use to analyse popular phrasing is Google’s Ngram Viewer, which analyses a huge database of writing from (currently) 1800–2019. You can enter phrases and compare how their popularity has changed. Here are the results for the three different forms of the phrase.

From this data, you can see that “forever after” has held a fairly common amount of usage, overtaking “for ever after” in 1888 and establishing itself as the more popular phrasing for the next 130 years. However, throughout the 19th century “for ever after” was much more popular, and its usage apparently dramatically declined. We can draw a few conclusions from this but the most obvious would seem to be that “for ever after” was probably used in a specific type of writing, which gradually faded – probably the sort of fairy tales and romances that first popularised “happily ever after” endings. With the decline of such books, the phrase itself was used less, while it would seem that the “forever after” style, which has remained fairly consistent, was less reliant on such trends. Perhaps “forever after” has longer been a staple in common usage, with “for ever after” more tied to a particular type of writing.

That’s a bit of speculation on my behalf but hopefully serves as an example of the sort of detail we can go into when considering the “correct” way to word something – and why it’s not necessarily something that depends on meaning or language logic!

I hope you found this interesting. Let me know your thoughts, and of course feel free to explore other similar examples in the comments!

It’s my tremendous honour to share that this February marks 10 years of articles on this website, and it’s still going as strong as ever. In celebration, I invite you to join me in looking back at the site’s history, some its achievements, and the content that has made it so popular (with a Top 10 Most Popular Articles list to follow!).

But first, thank you to all the very many readers who have encouraged me to keep going over such a long period! I couldn’t keep it up without you.

As a bonus, for the whole month of February all the ELB eBooks are 50% off in the store!

A Brief History of English Lessons Brighton

I created this website in 2012 to begin promoting local tutoring services in Brighton. Yet it’s 10 years ago, February 2023, that marks the point where I started sharing articles. I was answering questions for my students that I couldn’t find discussed elsewhere online, so I decided to share my own findings here – and the site took off.

At first, I was writing at least one article a week, which helped the site get picked up on search engines, and though I eventually slowed down, I have consistently released at least one new article and newsletter every month ever since.

The result, so far, is 259 published articles on the site, all of which you can find through various links on the Learn Online page.

Somehow, in the early days, it was my English tenses timeline that really started to get noticed. This would later help encourage the idea for The English Tenses Practical Grammar Guide, though I ultimately felt the timeline itself was flawed, and it doesn’t actually feature in the book!

It wasn’t long before I started producing books to accompany the website, and I owe a lot to the support and feedback I received from learners and teachers who had visited ELB and agreed to read samples (alongside, it must be said, the support and feedback received from my wonderful wife). The site never really sold many books itself (that was a whole other journey, which you can read about here), but it gave me invaluable support in the creation of those books. There are now 4 out, 3 of which have been Amazon Bestsellers.

Over the years, ELB continued to receive plenty of visits from search engines and people sharing the links, or from teachers sharing material with students. It far outdid two other websites I made at the time, one for creative writing and one for commercial writing, with the result that though I closed those sites some years ago, this one is still going.

The website now feels like a bit of an unlikely relic from internet’s past, though, as a personal site designed to share my own ideas about English quirks, not a commercial project (I’ve got ads for my own books up, but this site is not responsible for many sales, and I’ve never entertained third-party advertiser requests!).

10 years ago, your internet searches might have brought up any number of personal sites like this, but now it feels hard to spot any, with search engines flooded by commercial content. With that in mind, I feel it’s a minor miracle ELB is still drawing in large numbers of visitors after 10 years, and I hope it will continue to do so, for as long as it can…

ELB in Numbers

As I’ve already mentioned, this website has been going for 10 years with 259 articles currently published. Across those articles, we have about 1675 comments posted (including some hot debates about language usage) and thousands of subscribers to the blog and newsletter.

Going just by WordPress’s statistics, which may be somewhat inaccurate, we have had over 6 million page views. The most views in a day was 4,471 (about a year ago), and on average I have seen some 2,000 – 3,500 views every day for a good part of those 10 years. It’s declined over the past couple of years, and perhaps peaked around 2019.

Though book sales have been rather peripheral to the site itself, we’re at about 40,000 copies of ELB books sold worldwide; Word Order in English Sentences has sold over 15,000 copies and The English Tenses Practical Grammar Guide over 10,000, with Advanced Writing Skills for Students of English likely to cross 10,000 sales this year! All 3 books have been Kindle bestsellers in various categories, and at one point Word Order was one of the bestselling grammar eBooks on Amazon for over a year!

But the real meat of the site is in the articles themselves, which are daily reaching thousands of people all over the world. So what exactly are they all here for?

What are the 10 Most Popular Articles?

The most popular articles on the site often surprise me, because I usually just post what’s on my mind and don’t set out to do something the search engines will like. I’ve written some bumper articles that I hoped would get seen more, such as my complete word order guide and my growing phrasal verbs guide and list, but these aren’t typically the ones that people find.

That said, my guide to different language varieties has proved very popular, but has not been around long enough to compete with some of the articles below. And an honorary mention to the article on ‘this week’ vs ‘that week’, which just missed the Top 10 but is has by far produced the fiercest debating in the comments!

So, from the 10 years of the website, going by the WordPress stats, here’s a countdown of the Top 10 most viewed articles (click the titles to see the articles themselves):

10. 8 Grammar Rules for Writing Headlines

This was a hugely popular article for a while, from the very early days, but it’s not getting so much notice now: one that looks at some really tricky quirks of grammar!

9. Time Clauses

Likewise this proved popular for a long time, adapted first from a chapter of The English Tenses Practical Grammar Guide. It was removed and later replaced in the book itself, but has been here on the site since the book came out!

8. “There Is A Lot” vs “There Are A Lot”

A very specific comparison that leans into more complicated ideas of plurals and the way we speak!

7. Do we say “on foot” or “by foot”?

Another comparison, much less controversial than the above, but something a lot of people wonder about…

6. How to Use Suffixes to Create Nouns

A more technical article, this one gets into vocabulary-building through grammar, which clearly people liked.

5. “At the end” vs “In the End”

The most popular of our comparisons articles, this one works not just to answer specific phrasing, but to discuss preposition use in general.

4. The English Tenses Timeline

The (in)famous timeline as mentioned above, part of what sparked everything! It seems dated now, but continues to draw in visitors. I’ve been quoted on this image for various websites and even in academic papers, and all, I should note, with a minor error (the image should say “I have gone to school”!).

3. Saying Large Numbers in English

Another from the very early days, this has long been one of the most popular articles on the site, which is curious considering it’s also one of very few pieces where I’ve discussed speaking skills or pronunciation. It’s generated lots of discussion over the years!

2. How to Write Dates in English and American

Coming in second place, with almost twice as many views as third place, is another numerical-themed article, surveying and comparing date conventions.

1. Future Tenses Exercise

And at number one, with a whooping 650,000 views, for reasons that I have no idea, my most popular article on this website is a really rather simple and innocuous future tenses exercise! It has been with us for almost the whole 10 years of the website, and still people are checking it out.

So, those are the ones the numbers lay out, but there’s plenty more to explore. There’s all sorts themed for Halloween and Christmas, reading and writing exercises and plenty more. You can delve deeper into them all here. Do you have a favourite article? Let me know.

All that remains is to thank you again for joining me, and here’s hoping for another 10 strong years. If you’d like to help me keep the site going, continue sharing it to your friends and fellow students or teachers, and consider supporting the site through buying or promoting the books, or even considering our Patreon subscription.

And don’t forget the store promo while it lasts! 

This is a continuation of my Idioms and Sayings exercise series, which I started last month. As a reminder, I’ve put together a list of 45 interesting, popular sayings which I’m putting into 3 short exercises, with the third one to come soon. Check the first exercise for a more in depth introduction to idioms and sayings!

Idioms, Sayings and Proverbs Exercise 2

This is a simple exercise to try and get you thinking creatively about idioms and sayings. Below are 15 idioms and sayings, with example sentences. Can you guess their meanings? You may know the answers to some of these, but if not try and consider the possible message of the saying, then consider its purpose in the example sentence.

1. Always put your best foot forward

• Be rested and eager when you start your new job; remember to always put your best foot forward!

2. It’s a piece of cake

• I did very well in the English exam – it was a piece of cake!

3. A stitch in time saves nine

• Shelly took her car to the mechanics the moment it made a strange noise, well aware that a stitch in time saves nine.

4. Calm before the storm

• Our manager was obviously disappointed by the meeting, but he was strangely quiet as we all left. We could tell is was just the calm before the storm.

5. The ball is in your court

• I’ve sent over the documents for you to check and sign – the ball’s in your court now!

6. Still waters run deep

• You could see still waters ran deep with Rufus; he never said much, but he wrote the most interesting essays.

7. Get out of hand

• The party was already rather chaotic, but things really got out of hand when the rabbits escaped.

8. Better safe than sorry

• Please check if you turned off the oven before we go; better safe than sorry!

9. Don’t put your eggs in one basket

• Hilary decided to apply to six different schools, rather than put all her eggs in one basket.

10. There are plenty of other fish in the sea

• Lily was upset that her first date went badly, but her friends reminded her there were plenty of other fish in the sea.

11. Pull someone’s leg

• I don’t believe you caught a fish that big; you’re pulling my leg!

12. Call it a day

• With everyone tired, we decided to finish painting the bedroom tomorrow, and called it a day at 6pm.

13. There is method to the madness

• Lucas studies from three different textbooks at a time, but there must be method to his madness, as he always does well in tests.

14. A blessing in disguise

• The train arrived late, but it had stopped raining by then, so the delay was a blessing in disguise.

15. Easy come, easy go

• I found a £5 note on the floor, but needed to use it to pay for extra parking – easy come, easy go!

Answers (Idiom and Saying Definitions)

Below are suggested definitions for the idioms and sayings; you may find some are slightly nuanced, and can carry extra meaning depending on how people use them. These ones don’t have much shorter forms, except that you can expect to see them without adverbials or definers (e.g. no “always”, “there is/it is”).

1. Always put your best foot forward: start doing something with your best effort
2. It’s a piece of cake: it is very easy
3. A stitch in time saves nine: doing something early leads to less work later
4. Calm before the storm: a period of unusual quiet that may indicate something bad is coming
5. The ball is in your court: you are expected to act next/take responsibility
6. Still waters run deep: something calm can have hidden depths (e.g. a quiet person may be very thoughtful)
7. Get out of hand: become unmanageable
8. Better safe than sorry: it is better to be too cautious than risk causing a problem
9. Don’t put your eggs in one basket: do not rely on thing; it is good to have alternative options
10. There are plenty of other fish in the sea: there are lots of other options (usually used to mean do not waste time worrying over one lost opportunity, particularly for relationships)
11. Pull someone’s leg: to trick someone
12. Call it a day: decide to finish what you are doing, either temporarily or completely
13. There is method to the madness: something that seems chaotic actually has a rational explanation
14. A blessing in disguise: something that seemed bad has a hidden positive point
15. Easy come, easy go: something that is easily obtained can be easily lost (and this might be expected)

Please leave any questions or comments below, and fingers crossed I’ll have some more for you soon!