Latest Articles from ELB
Pronouncing question words with contractions
There are many contractions in English, as shown in my previous list exploring the most common ones. The most commonly contracted words, such as is, not, will, are and had, are reasonably clear to identify, usually joined by either a personal pronoun, certain subject...
Should “no” be followed by a singular or a plural noun?
No is used to describe nouns, meaning zero - no cheese, no fun, no noise, no clowns, etc. Withuncountable nouns, zero is always followed by a plural – zero people, zero degrees, etc. However, no is more flexible than zero. Normally, it is followed by a plural noun –...
Friday Vocabulary Lessons on Twitter
Bored of filling the English Lessons Brighton Twitter page with links to ELB articles (a huge variety of content as there is here), I have decided to start a series of scheduled Twitter lessons, to make things more interesting. The first of these that I am introducing...
How to use the past perfect continuous
The past perfect continuous can seem quite complicated to form, with had + been + present participle. However, the nice thing about the past perfect continuous is that the words used in the form never change (like the bare infinitive). This is because all three words...
The names of all the letters in the English alphabet
When you need to spell a word out loud, there is a recognised vocabulary for naming the individual letters of the English alphabet. The names of these letters mostly correspond to the sound of the letter itself (usually in a single long vowel form, or with a consonant...
Defining and non-defining relative clauses and “that”
Relative clauses add extra information to a sentence by defining a noun. They are usually divided into two types –defining relative clauses and non-defining relative clauses. A relative clause is one that adds information to a sentence, in relation to a noun. For...
What are simple, compound and complex sentences?
Simple sentences are formed in English containing an independent clause that forms a grammatically complete action, event or idea. A simple sentence should have a complete noun and verb relationship with any necessary additional information. To make writing more...
How and when to use the “Not only…but also” construction
The construction “not only … but also …” is used to emphasise something that has more than one quality, or has done more than activity, where the final quality is especially surprising or noteworthy. It can be used to list adjective qualities, nouns or verbs, to show...
What is a bare infinitive?
As part of the introduction to the grammar guide The English Tenses, I explain important words that are required to understand English grammar - including participles and infinitives. The following is a full explanation of what we mean when we say the bare infinitive,...