How Phrasal Verbs Can Form Compound Nouns
I always find it interesting to look at ways that words connect, so we can see how one type of word might become another. I was struck by a specific area of this recently while editing a crime novel, which included a lot of compound nouns that stem from phrasal verbs....
What are homonyms, heterographs and heteronyms?
I had an idea to discuss contronyms this month, which are a specific type of homonym, but I realised I don’t have an article on homonyms here. These are an interesting (and difficult) aspect of English, where we have a great many words that can either look or sound...
What’s the difference between accept, except and expect?
Time for another comparisons / common mistakes post, as I had a few requests towards the end of last year regarding some commonly confused words. Today’s ones look very similar (and can sound very similar) but have very different meanings, so they’re good...
What’s the difference between “it’s” and “its”?
Here’s an issue that confuses native English speakers: when and where to use an apostrophe with it. This has been covered a lot online, because these two words are very commonly confused, but I still get asked about it so hope my own explanation might reach a few more...
Different Types of Language Varieties
I’ve had a few blog comments lately addressing how English is used or taught differently, and thought it would be a useful exercise to produce an article covering how we discuss varieties of a language. Some of the most active articles I have are ones where people...Want to Master English?
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