Latest Articles from ELB
Ongoing or Complete? A Past Simple or Continous Exercise
Taking a break between my examples of different tenses in use, this is a good time to share another English tenses exercise. You may know I'm developing an entire book of exercises to accompany The English Tenses Practical Grammar Guide; it's taken a long time but...
Combing Different Tenses 2: Past Perfect and Past Perfect Continuous
Continuing my series demonstrating how each tense can combined with the other tenses, here I’m looking at the past perfect and past perfect continuous. The aim is to provide examples sentences that show how a single tense connects to the other 12 aspects; past,...
Combining Different Tenses: Past Simple and Past Continuous
I was recently asked for some basic rules regarding how we can combine two different tenses in one sentence – for example which tenses can or cannot be used together. I’m not aware a comparison of the tenses being readily available in this way; my instinct is that...
Singular and Plural Verbs with “Either…or” and “Neither…nor”
Subject/verb agreement can be confusing when we use either…oror neither…nor couplets. As we’re presenting a noun phrase withmultiple objects, it seems natural to use a plural verb, but the verb may often be used in the singular. This depends on the nouns included; the...
ELB 10k – Book Giveaway
ELB recently passed 10,000 books sold, which is cause to celebrate. It's incredible how far the books have reached, so, this week I'm running a flash giveaway, open from now until Feb 19th, of 15 EBOOKS - five of each of our currently available books: Advanced Writing...
What does it mean to “be of help”?
The phrase “to be of help” is a construction roughly synonymous with “helpful”. “Of help” is particularly common in formal settings, and has a subtly different meaning and application to the adjective “helpful”. I briefly touched on such “noun of noun” constructions...
The Gift of Time – Christmas English Tenses Exercise
It's that time of the year again where we put lights in the windows and try to bring good cheer, so I've got a new Christmas-themed exercise for you. In the style of the popular Christmas Mess exercise I shared before, the following is a short Christmas story that...
27 English Tenses Exercises
Having been asked frequently for exercises to go with The English Tenses Practical Grammar Guide, I compiled this list to share all the tenses exercises on this site together. I've since also produced The English Tenses Exercise Book to add over 150 more exercises to...
How to Add Emphasis in Writing
Emphasis is when a particular stress or importance is given to something. Many exceptions to grammatical rules in English relate to emphasising particular words or ideas, making it a very important and also very broad topic. Structure, word order, vocabulary choice,...