Latest Articles from ELB
How to Structure Sentences Logically
I often discuss breaking down sentence structure and word order to demonstrate how understanding sentence components helps provide flexibility with structure. You can use the full word order guide to help with this here. Today, though, I’d like to discuss cases when...
Using Pronouns and Determiners to Clarify General Plurals
Effective pronoun and determiner use in English can be tricky and very nuanced. I’ve already got a few articles on their uses here, where I’ve said it’s hard to learn from the rules alone. The issue I want to discuss here is when general plurals are used instead of...
The Origins of Christmas Words
Christmas is right around the corner, and as keen readers will know we like a good holiday here at ELB. Christmas is a holiday with deep and diverse historical roots, and the language surrounding it reflects this: while the name very clearly evokes the Christian...
Should you write “all right” or “alright”?
In today's new article I'm taking a look at the difference between 'all right' and 'alright', something which has come up a few times for me in my editing work and a point I've considered probably more than I should have in my own writing. It's possible (and somewhat...
The Brown House Ghoul – Halloween Reading/Tenses Exercise
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...
What are prefixes and why is it useful to know about them?
When it comes to studying vocabulary, it's worth knowing how words can be broken down or how they are formed. One of the structures that can help form words is a prefix – simply, any letters that appear before the root of a word. Prefixes can be used before many words...
When do language rules matter in English?
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)...
What’s the difference between objective and subjective?
I had an idea to write an article discussing the difference between flexible and inflexible language rules, and when it matters to be precise or not. This is a broad and nuanced topic, which veers into matters of opinion, and I realised first it would be more useful...
Commas in Use: an Exercise
I’ve been mostly editing books lately, so a lot of my focus has been on little details of English in written work. A frequent topic for inconsistencies or complications is commas, hence I have produced a full group of articles about them on this site. I was going to...