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What are the Trickiest Rules in English Grammar Pertaining to Commonly Used Words?

by Oct 22, 2015English

English grammar is very important to construct a sentence. The construction of a sentence is necessary to express the words properly. However, when you use some common words unknowingly, you have the chances of confusion. The non-English people are suffering as they need to know the rules accurately. But, if you think about the English people, they can easily arrange the words mainly because it sounds good. Another important factor that you may think about some common words even they have similar meaning, but their use is different. So, you need to know about this correctly, whenever you explain or write the words. Let us see, some common words and their representation techniques as follows-

  • Use of adjectives-
  • You know that an adjective describes a noun. Now, the sentence is “the purple, big ball”. Is it correct or incorrect? It is wrong, but why? Even both the words are adjectives, this is an incorrect sentence. So, the correct sound or the arrangements of words would be “the big, purple ball”. Here, you have to follow certain rules and thus, arrangement of words related to adjectives must follow this rule as “Quantity, Opinion, Size, Age, Shape, Color, Origin, Material and Purpose”. Now, go to the words again, size should be placed before color.

  • Use of a/an-
  • What you teach your child about the use of ‘a’ and ‘an’? All people do that initially that ‘an’ is used before a noun that starts with a vowel like “a, e, i, o and u”. All other words that starts with constants need ‘a’. Now, just think about an hour, a useful, an X-ray and many others like that. Where do your rules to the child work? So, is it wrong or are you teaching your baby the wrong things? Yes, this is a wrong way of teaching.

    What vowels say? Vowels are used to make the words that generate vowel sounds in a larger quantity, but it does not mean that these words are unable to make consonant sound. In the same way, some consonants are also there that form words with vowel sound like hour, X-ray, honest, M.A. etc.

    What should be the exact rule? From the beginning stage, we should clear to the children that the nouns that starts with consonant sound requires ‘a’ before it. It may be any word, but as the consonants are very much helpful in generating this sound so everyone should concentrate on its pronunciation. All vowels are also used in similar ways.

  • Use of ‘The’ before nations-
  • Why you use the USA and not the India or the Pakistan? But, in both the cases you are indicating only one nation. It is only because when use any explanation like words like united words before a nation, then it requires an article “The”. Now, you can easily think that why The UAE or The USA.

  • Homophones –
  • One of the biggest problems for those who don’t know the meanings of those words which have the same sound like some other words. So, how to recover this problem? You can easily recover this problem by knowing its proper meaning. Accept and except are just opposite words, but you can only write it properly when you understand its meaning.

  • Problems of preposition-
  • You can easily get that prepositions sometimes jumble your mind that which one is perfect. So, you need to know the purpose and the use of a word when you are going to apply a preposition. Suppose, deal with and deal in, this single word requires to express a preposition. But, what is this? There are some rules that you need to follow. Here, deal with can be used when there is someone. But, deal in means there is something that you want dealing.

  • Some similar words with a distinctive mean-
  • Some words are there that sometimes create confusion as “Continual” and “Continuous”. Often people use these words in an improper way. Continual means occurring of an action for a long time with some time interval or lapses in time. So, if you are talking about, “The continual music made me irritate”. But, your English would be wrong, if you say that “The continual talking” as it should be “The continuous talking”. It means this is completely non-stop talking. A number of words are there, which is unable to express its real meaning, but you need to find out or know before you use them.

  • Rules of verb agreements-
  • More than 60% people do mistakes with verb agreements. Again, non-English men do much. If you look those words that some in group first then you have to behave with that particular sentence in a proper way. But, if you do not get some complex subjects, you need to know some exact rules. Focus on subjects and then describe your sentence properly. “I along with him” and “He and I” are completely different while using in a sentence. So, verb agreement is very important to know before you write them.

  • Very common use of digits-
  • You should not write digits in any article in numbers. But, here is also an important thing that you should not write those numbers which are single in words as twelve, twenty, sixty, hundred, thousand etc. But, you should not write one ninety two as it is wrong. Let us explain as twenty members in a committee and there are 192 members in United Nations are completely correct sentence.

Now, there are many such rules which you can easily get in an exact way and it is very important for you to know it properly. So, always acquire these rules as much as you can to know your faults. You will get that a lot of mistakes people write and speak, and without any hesitation the others accept it. But, you should rectify it to know the real use of words so that you can use it without any mistake. These rules really make the sense more accurate and perfect for a reader as well as for a writer.