As is the design of our courses, theoretical learning should be accompanied by practice so that you have understood the concept well. So, here is a quiz – or as we call it in our courses, a practice paper – to reinforce your understanding.
A common problem a copyeditor faces is the identification of the right subject for the verb. As easy as it seems, even careful copyeditors may fail to recognize the lack of agreement between a subject and its verb because of the intervening phrases and clauses. By systematically approaching the subject phrase, we can identify the head noun of a noun phrase easily as explained in this post.
Seemingly simple decisions such as which indefinite article will go before a word can quickly turn into a difficult choice. While editors and most authors have mastered this decision-making, sometimes even experienced editors may stumble into a problem when an abbreviation is encountered.
There has been a lot of activity since the announcement about our first course, Essentials of Language Editing, was made. It is encouraging and exciting to see that a good number of editors and aspiring editors have shown interest in the sample lesson on subject–verb...
Is “updation” even a word? Is the antonym for “postpone” “prepone”? Read on to find how Indian English has added some spice to the English language.
Whether you are a writer or an editor, when you add phrases, always ensure that they modify the appropriate part of the sentence.
Rules might change, myths might vanish, and only the minds which are open to learning will survive.
What is that one type of error that may go unnoticed even under otherwise careful eyes, but can be very embarrassing when noticed, both to the author and, obviously, to the one who edited the manuscript? Read on…
Celebrations are a coming together of groups of people with the common goal of commemorating or valuing something. Why can’t grammar be that thing?
This week’s Editor’s Essentials Sunday Crossword is all about sentences. Each clue is a “sentence” that stands as an example of a technique. Identify the technique and that’s the answer to the clue.
A WhatsApp conversation. U: "What is the English translation of பà¯à®°à¯à®à¯à®à®¾à®² à® à®à®¿à®ªà¯à®ªà®à¯?" S: "War footing" U: "Thanks, S. Is this a noun?" S: "Welcome" U: "Adjective?" S: "Yes" "On a war footing" "Adverb" "Action taken on a war footing"...
In my previous post I talked about the use of since and because and how they are different or same. This piece is more a hangover due to the previous post. After having thought and talked about the grammar side of since vs. because, I still felt the previous...
The moment you started typing since, Google will suggest since vs because. Such is the power of this pair of words. The confusion stems from the fact that since and because are interchangeable, though not always. In fact, there is no confusion most of the times....
Recently I received a WhatsApp message, a picture message with Vivekananda, the great saint in his arms-crossed pose. Unusually, this time it was about English grammar. I was rather surprised. Many of his quotations are on meditation, Hinduism, devotion, and the...
Not necessarily is “to” always an infinitive marker; it can be a preposition too.
We copy editors are always on the lookout for information. Not as aggressive as Google, which accesses and stores every bit of information that comes its way (quite literally), copy editors look out for information that they need. It could be the spelling or usage of...
The last post explained how restrictive (or defining) relative clauses create a proper subset of a set. In other words, these clauses classify the noun into two: one that is governed by the relative clause definition; the other that is not. But an important...
All right, now I got your question – rather, questions. Who's Mr Venn? Why would he come to teach English? What is he teaching now? Before you inundate me with all those questions, let me tell you about him. John Venn, FRS, FSA (4 August 1834 – 4 April 1923) was...
One of my blog posts that bring in several new visitors is "however vs. though". So I thought I should share some example sentences with you all. You may try to find out whether the sentences are correct and punctuate accordingly. More precisely, use "however", not...
One of the ways to form an adjective is to add the suffix ~ic or ~ical. There is no clear rule about when to use which. As a rule of thumb, many of the older nouns have the ~ical adjective, while most of the newer ones have ~ic suffix. The suffix ~ic or ~ical means...
Teacher: Children, what do you observe from the picture? Students: Two kids, Teacher. One with a gadget, one with a bird. Teacher: Good. What do you see below? Student: As is the custom in FB, any picture that is shared should accompany a moral. This picture is also...
A headline today in the Hindu: Police Recruits Learn Shooting Not lethal, though.
Today's crash blossoms is from The Hindu.TV shows jailed IPS officer visiting homeYou might be tempted to believe that an IPS officer was jailed by a TV show. Our mind parses "TV shows" together as the subject of the sentence and the verb as "jailed". This is because...
Commas are most probably the tiniest creature that can cause heartbreaks to any copy editor. The simple reason is that they are not solely governed by rules. Arguably, using commas have as many exceptions as there are rules. Consider such as for example. The such as...
Sorry to be blunt, but that was the first question that came to my mind after reading this article in the Economic Times yesterday. I'm complaining not about the use - rather the misuse - of commas in the text, nor about the sloppy writing. I'm startled by the obvious...
After a hiatus, this post could be a good one to resume blogging. I was reading the Chicago Style Q&A and liked two questions in this issue. The first one: Q. Should she or it be used as a pronoun for a country? A. Never use she to refer to a country. You’ll sound...
I just tried to clarify the usage of "however" and "though".
Here is another trivia. The indefinite pronoun "each" is singular. It takes a singular verb. Each creation is different. Note that "each" comes before a singular noun and takes a singular verb. If "each" is followed by an "of" phrase, still it takes a singular verb....
In a recent interview aired on channel Star Vijay, Gopinath interviewed a Tamil actor. The actor was recalling how he felt it difficult to perform certain dance movements. When Gopinath asked the actor how one of his co-actors dances, he said, "He is a good dancer;...
The draft version of the first sentence of my first blog post ((faulty) parallelism) read thus: As part of rebuilding this blog (I started this way back in 2008, with nothing being posted till now), I was skimming through various WordPress pages. When I read the entry...