English guide - KimmoA.se

This is a little "English guide for dummies" which does not use any "difficult words". There is no kind of structure/order; it is simply a series of "common pitfalls" that are being addressed, one by one.

If you were told to go here, you should not feel insulted or ashamed. Just read this page carefully and you will likely learn something new. English, being a natural rather than a constructed language, with such wide adoption all over the world, can be very tricky, and its constant and horrible misuse on the Internet and elsewhere certainly doesn't help as you attempt to learn it. Hopefully, this page will, though.

"Your" versus "you're"

The completely different words "your" and "you're" (which is really two words) are frequently confused.

Your is ONLY used to refer to a person's belongings. It is NEVER used as a short form of "you are".

Right: Your dog is very nice!
Right: I love apple pie! May I have your piece as well?

You're ALWAYS means "you are". It is NEVER used to refer to a person's belongings.

Right: You're such a good swimmer!
Right: If I'm going to the ball, you're going too, right?

"It's" versus "its"

The completely different words "its" and "it's" (which is really two words) are frequently confused.

Its is ONLY used to refer to something's belongings. It is NEVER used to mean "it is". Compare this to "her" or "his", but for animals, objects and so on.

Right: The cat is nice. Its fur is fluffy.
Right: I love this hamburger! The taste is so good and its ingredients really melt in your mouth!

It's ALWAYS means "it is", "it has" or "it was" (depending on the context). It is NEVER used to refer to something's belongings.

Right: It's really cold outside today!
Right: Do you think it's right to steal to survive?

The comma (",")

The comma is frequently used where it has no place whatsoever, and is seldom used where it belongs. Here follow some examples:

Wrong: I like animals, they're great.
Wrong: I like animals they're great.
Right: I like animals. They're great.
Right: I like animals — they're great.
Right: I like animals; they're great.

Wrong: I don't care much for humans though.
Right: I don't care much for humans, though.
Right (alternative structure): However, I don't care much for humans.

Wrong: Hi everyone, welcome to the grammar party!
Right: Hi, everyone! Welcome to the grammar party!
Right: Hi, everyone — welcome to the grammar party!
Right (alternative structure): Hi, everyone, and welcome to the grammar party!
Right (alternative structure): Hi and welcome to the grammar party, everyone!

Basically, a "comma splice" is where you just combine two different statements/sentences into one by adding a comma in between. This is extremely common, but also extremely wrong. Please never do this.

Acronyms and the apostrophe

"MP3", "CD", "TV" and "DVD" are examples of acronyms. They are always written in uppercase letters. "mp3", "Mp3", "cd" and so on are always wrong when dealing with acronyms.

When you want to refer to several MP3 files or compact discs, you just add an "s". There is no apostrophe in that case! Examples:

Wrong: I have a huge collection of DVD's!
Right: I have a huge collection of DVDs!

"A" or "an"?

Generally, you put "an" before words that begin with a "vowel", and "a" before words that begin with a "consonant". However, you often can't just look at the first letter of a written word to determine which one to use since it may be pronounced differently from how it is written, and how it is pronounced is what actually counts.

Vowels: A, E, I, O, U and sometimes Y.

Consonants: B, C, D, F, G, H, J, K, L, M, N, P, Q, R, S, T, V, W, X, sometimes Y, and Z.

Examples:

Wrong: This is a apple.
Right: This is an apple.
Wrong: That is an machine.
Right: That is a machine.
Wrong: This is a honest mistake.
Right: This is an honest mistake.

Note: "Honest" is pronounced as "anest" or "onest". That's why the example with "a" in front is wrong.

"Who's" or "whose"?

"Who's" simply means "who is" or "who has", depending on the context. "Whose" is used like this:

Right: Alfred, whose last name was Hitchcock, made some nice movies.
Wrong: Alfred, who's last name was Hitchcock, made some nice movies.
Right: Do you know whose bike this is?
Wrong: Do you know who's bike this is?
Right: Who's that girl?
Wrong: Whose that girl?
Right: Do you know who's got the shovel?
Wrong: Do you know whose got the shovel?

Years and ages

It is common to see things such as "the 80's", usually referring to "the 1980s" (depending on the context). It is wrong. Never add an apostrophe like that. If you leave out the first part of the year, however, you add one before:

Wrong: The 60's were wild, maaan!
Right: The '60s were wild, maaan!
Wrong: She was born in the 1990's.
Right: She was born in the 1990s.

The same concept applies to ages as well:

Wrong: Many great men kept active well into their 90's!
Right: Many great men kept active well into their 90s!

In order to refer to a person of a certain age, the correct way is "a 19-year-old woman" rather than "a 19 years old woman" (as one would perhaps assume).

"Then" versus "than"

The completely different words "then" and "than" are frequently confused. They may sound very similar when pronounced.

Than is used in the following situations:

Right: You are taller than Sue.
Right: The bird is older than the cat.
Right: Rather than just eating it, enjoy the meal!

Then is used in the following situations:

Right: First get a shovel. Then dig.
Right: I first looked around, then prepared myself and finally jumped over the fence!
Wrong: 45 is a bigger number then 42.

"Won't" versus "wont"

Both "won't" and "wont" are technically correct English, but used in completely different contexts. "Wont" is very rarely used compared to "won't", and can probably be safely ignored if you are reading this guide.

Won't simply is short for "will not":

Right: That stupid cat just won't come down from the tree!
Right: I won't write "wont" where I mean "won't" from now on.

Wont is used in rare situations which can easily be avoided by using different words:

Right: He awoke at the crack of dawn, as was his wont.
Right: He is wont to complain loudly about his job.

"Loose" versus "lose"

Lose means that you had something but then no longer have it; you lost it.

Right: You're going to lose your driver's license if you keep drinking vodka and smoking weed while driving!
Right: Gambling tends to make you lose money more often than you win any.

Loose means that something is not very firm.

Right: That loose branch could fall down from the tree any day now.
Right: If you keep such a loose grip of the baseball bat, you will lose the game tomorrow!

Note that calling somebody a "looser" makes no sense. What you mean is "loser".

Bits and bytes

It is extremely common to see these two things confused. A bit is typed as a lower-case "b", whereas a byte is always typed as a capital "B". The same goes for "mega" (M) and "milli" (m).

Since one byte (usually) equals eight bits, confusing these two can cause major confusion. While "bit" is usually used in network-related contexts and "byte" is common for storage devices (such as hard disk drives), for instance, Nintendo has in the past used "Mb" intentionally, supposedly in order to be able to use larger (and thus more impressive) numbers.

If you were to say "My computer has 1 Gb RAM!", you are actually saying that your computer has 0.125 GB (or 128 MB) of RAM, which is most likely not what you meant. Talking about "mb" (milli bits) just becomes nonsensical; you can't have something smaller than a "bit"!

Assorted rules

A space IS placed AFTER a comma (","), period ("."), colon (":"), semi-colon (";"), question mark ("?"), an exclamation mark ("!") and an ellipsis ("…").
A space is NOT placed BEFORE a comma (","), period ("."), colon (":"), semi-colon (";"), question mark ("?"), an exclamation mark ("!") or an ellipsis ("…").
A space IS placed BEFORE a beginning parenthesis ("(") but NOT before an ending parenthesis (")").

Some examples:

Wrong: This text is just so wrong(obviously ).
Wrong: This text is just so wrong(obviously).
Right: This text is just so right (obviously).
Wrong: Cats ,dogs,birds and mice may be pets.
Wrong: Cats , dogs , birds and mice may be pets.
Right: Cats, dogs, birds and mice may be pets.

Random Capitalization

"Random Capitalization" is what I personally call the strange, ambiguous practice of "randomly" capitalizing the initials of all/some words in a headline (and sometimes, in extreme cases, even the body of a text!) that aren't "special" to the English language or the context. This appears to have roots in newspaper typography in some countries, supposedly used for aesthetic and/or attention-grabbing purposes.

While many would say that this isn't exactly "wrong", surely you must agree that it's essentially asking for confusion? Consider the following examples:

Silly	Sensible	Comment
China Hates Tibet Very Much	China hates Tibet very much	"China" and "Tibet" have upper-case initials because they are "countries".
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland Selling Record Copies	Alice's Adventures in Wonderland selling record copies	The book's original title is preserved.
Help Me Fix My Broken Computer! :-(	Help me fix my broken computer! :-(	There is not a single word here that is "special".
Anyone Else Got The New Ipod?	Anyone else got the new iPod?	iPod is a trademark. Typing "Ipod" is just wrong.
Has Anyone Here Seen Toy Story 3 Yet?	Has anyone here seen Toy Story 3 yet?	"Toy Story 3" is a movie title.
Ipad Sure Is One Cool Gadget, Huh?	iPad sure is one cool gadget, huh?	Again, "iPad" is a trademark. It doesn't matter if it's the first word.
AOL Sure Is One Crappy ISP.	AOL sure is one crappy ISP.	"AOL" is a trademark and "ISP" is an acronym.

Money sums and other numbers

Even though this differs depending on where you are, or where your audience is, it seems meaningful to briefly mention some things about the formatting of money sums and other numbers.

At least in the United States and United Kingdom, the standard is the same for both money sums and other numbers:

$10,000 US dollars.
10,000 slices of bread.

That is, you put a comma every three digits from the right in any number. A period is used for the "decimal point":

$10,000.04 US dollars.
10,000.04 slices of bread.

As seen above, the decimal part may be omitted entirely if it's zero.

Again: note that these formatting rules seem to depend on the geographical/cultural context rather than the English language, and can be the source of a lot of confusion. It appears to be a commonly accepted International standard to use spaces instead of commas for the "thousands separator", but whether you should do this depends on the context.

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Short address to this page: http://kimmoa.se/eng
Originally published in 2008. Last touched 2013-08-14.