Only the horses can find us tonight
I'm letting my inner Grammar Nazi out again. Prepare yourselves. Also including definitions at no extra charge.
1. Don't get "etc." and "and so on" mixed up. "Etc." (short for "et cetera", Latin for "and the rest") is used to imply a continuing list of different items. For example, "They had all different kinds of fruits: apples, pears, peaches, plums, etc." This implies that there were other, different kinds of fruits there other than the ones that were already mentioned. "And so on", on the other hand, implies repetition; e.g. "The song 'Around the World' by Daft Punk has lyrics that go 'Around the world, around the world, around the world, around the world' and so on". This means that the lyrics repeat the phrase "around the world" over and over. And for the love of all deities, it's "etc.", not "and etc." "Et" means "and". "And etc." basically means "And and the rest". Also, "etc." is used for lists of things. For lists of people or places, use "et al." (short for "et alii" (people) or "et alibi" (places)).
2. Wondering when to use "who" and when to use "whom"? Try replacing it with "he/him" or "they/them" and see which one makes sense. Example: "Who was shot?" "He was shot". "He" works here, so use "who". But "Who did he shoot?" - "He shot he" - no. He shot him. So "Whom did he shoot?" is correct.
3. Similarly, you can work out whether to use "and I" or "and me" by stripping away everything but the first person pronoun. "Steve shot John and I", when stripped down, would be "Steve shot I", which is wrong, so "Steve shot John and me" is right. "Steve and me shot John", when stripped down, would be "Me shot John", which is also wrong, so "Steve and I shot John" is right. Grammatically, that is.
4. "Myself" is a reflexive pronoun, and describes things that you do to yourself, e.g. "I touch myself" (and if you do, please keep it private). "Someone like myself" is wrong, because there's no verb in that sentence. "Someone like me" is the correct way to say it. Similarly, "yourself" is only used for verbs that "you" are both doing and receiving, i.e. "Did you hurt yourself?" is correct (the person is both doing the hurting and being hurt), but "A pretty girl like yourself" is wrong, because again, no verb is involved. "A pretty girl like you" is the way to go.
5. "The reason [blah blah blah] is because [blah blah blah]" is probably one of the most frequent grammatical mistakes ever, to the point many don't even realise it's an error to begin with. The reason it is an error is because (see what I did there?) "because" begins an adverbial phrase, which cannot act as a predicate noun or predicate adjective modifying the subject "reason". The predicate, by the way, is the part of the sentence that says something about the subject or object; for example, in the sentence "The dog barked very loudly", "The dog" is the subject and "barked very loudly" is the predicate. A way to fix the error with "because" would either be to replace "because" with "that", turning it into a noun phrase, or rewrite the sentence to remove "reason". For instance, "The reason he shot me is because I called him fat" would be incorrect. Either "He shot me because I called him fat" or "The reason he shot me is that I called him fat" would work.
6. To substitute X for Y means to get rid of Y and replace it with X, not the other way around. "In hot weather, I substitute jeans for shorts" means that in hot weather, you wear jeans instead of shorts. "Substitute shorts for jeans" is what you probably meant to say, though "substitute jeans with shorts" would also work (and "replace" instead of "substitute" works even better).
7. "May" and "might" are very similar words, and interchangeable most of the time. However, if you want to talk about something that could have happened in the past, but didn't, then you can only use "might". For example, "If the ambulance had arrived sooner, the man might have survived" is correct, as it tells us the man died (he could have survived, if the ambulance had arrived sooner, but he didn't). "If the ambulance had arrived sooner, the man may have survived" is incorrect, as it indicates ambiguity as to whether he survived or not. In most other cases, though, you can use both words: "I may go to the cinema tomorrow" and "I might go to the cinema tomorrow" are both correct.
8. Learn your conditionals. There are four types of conditional clause in English. The first is the zero conditional, used for general truths and general habits, which is "if + present simple, present simple". For example, "If you add two and two, you get four". The second type, the first conditional, is used for future events that are possible or likely to happen. The formula for this one is "If + present simple, will + infinitive". Example: "If it rains later, we will stay at home". The second conditional is used either for impossible things in the present, or unlikely things in the future, and takes the form of "if + past simple, would + infinitive". For example, "If I won the lottery, I would go to Japan". The final type, the third conditional, describes things that didn't happen in the past and what would have happened if they did, and goes "if + past perfect, would + have + past participle". "If I had studied, I would have passed the exam".
9. Subjunctive mood is a thing, people. Use it. "I wish I was a bird" is wrong, unless you're saying that you wish you had been a bird in the past (and even then, it should be "I wish I had been a bird"). "I wish I were a bird" is correct. And on that note, it's subjunctive mood, not subjunctive tense. Tenses are to do with time: past, present, future, etc.
10. The phrase is "hold the fort", not "hold down the fort". "Hold" in this case means "defend", not "weigh down" or "physically restrain" or anything like that.
11. There are two rules of English grammar that actually don't exist, despite many people saying that they do. Those are "don't end a sentence with a preposition" and "don't split infinitives". These rules were made up by Victorian schoolmasters attempting to make English grammar follow the rules of Latin grammar, which makes about as much sense as trying to make it follow the rules of Japanese grammar. It's fine to boldly split an infinitive, and a preposition is okay to end a sentence with.
12. This is more definition than grammar, but people will often say of these () "Those aren't brackets, they're parentheses". Parentheses are a type of bracket, also called round brackets. Other types of brackets are square brackets [], curly brackets {} and angle brackets <>, also called chevrons.
13. To be jealous means that you're afraid that something you own will be taken away from you. A jealous boyfriend/girlfriend is one that's worried that they'll lose their boyfriend/girlfriend to another person. When people say "I'm jealous of that person", what they usually mean is that they're envious of them. Also, don't get "envious" and "covetous" mixed up. "Covetous" means "They've got a really nice TV, I want it." "Envious" means "They've got a really nice TV, I want to get an even better one so I can one-up them." "Jealous" means "I've got a really nice TV, I hope my neighbours don't try to steal it."
14. "LEGO" is a trademark, and trademarks are adjectives. The term for the building blocks made by the LEGO company is "LEGO blocks" or "LEGO bricks", not "Legos". Calling them "Legos" is like calling them "bigs" or "hards". Also note that "LEGO" is properly written in all-caps.
15. "Disinterested" does not mean the same thing as "uninterested". "Disinterested" means "impartial, unbiased". It's possible to be interested in something in which you are a disinterested party. A judge should always be disinterested, but never uninterested, in the case before him or her.
16. "Factoid" is often used as if it meant "fact" or "piece of trivia", as in "Here's a little factoid for you". It actually means "something resembling a fact, but with no evidence to back it up" or "an invented fact that is believed to be true because of repeated use", much like "android" means "something resembling a man" ("andros" is ancient Greek for "man", as in "human").
17. A man is a male human. Man (with no article) means humanity or humankind in general. Neil Armstrong's famous moon landing quotation was "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind" - in other words, "That's one small step for a human, but a giant leap for humanity". For years, due to the sound quality of the transmission, people thought it was "That's one small step for man", which would make the whole thing paradoxical, since it would basically mean he was saying "One small step for humanity, one giant leap for humanity". However, the recording was recently analysed and it was discovered that he did actually say "a man", but the "a" was lost in transmission. There is no evidence of him saying "Good luck, Mr Gorsky", however.
18. The adjectival form of the verb "addict" is "addictive", not "addicting". "Addicting" would be the present continuous form of the verb, not the adjectival form. Saying that video games are addicting is basically saying that video games are, right now, in the process of making someone addicted to them.
19. A lot of people, including many English teachers, insist that "I feel bad" is only to be used to say that your sense of touch is functioning improperly, and that the proper phrase to say that you feel unwell is "I feel badly". This is complete nonsense, and in fact the inverse is true; in the statement "I feel bad", "bad" is a predicate adjective modifying the subject "I" and linked to it by the linking verb "feel". In the statement "I feel badly", "badly" is an adverb that modifies the verb "feel". This is yet another result of trying to make English follow the rules of Latin grammar - in Latin, the words "good" and "bad" are defining characteristics, akin to "saintly" and "evil". In Latin, "I feel well" or "I feel unwell" would be the typical answers to the question "How are you?", rather than "I feel good" or "I feel bad". In English, though, both "I feel good/bad" and "I feel well/unwell" are correct. As a rule, "feel" in the sense of feeling a certain way, "look" in the sense of looking a certain way (rather than looking at something), "sound", "smell", "taste" and all forms of "to be" do not take adverbs. "It tastes good" means that its taste is pleasing to you. "It tastes well" means that it's very good at tasting things.
20. If you describe a snake as "poisonous", it means that the snake will harm you if you eat it. While a few snakes do have this characteristic, most snakes are venomous, not poisonous.
21. "Nauseous" means "causing nausea", not "suffering from nausea" (that would be "nauseated"). "I feel nauseous" really means "I'm in a mood to make people sick". Just as poisonous things make you poisoned, nauseous things make you nauseated.
22. "If" and "whether" are similar words, but should not be mixed up. "Ask your doctor if this drug is right for you" means something like "If you determine that this drug is right for you, ask your doctor about it". Please, ask your doctor whether this drug is right for you. (And for all you pedants out there, yes, there should be a comma after "if" in the first example, but that changes the reading of the sentence.)
23. If you're "doing good", it means you're doing good deeds, such as charity work or helping people. If you're asked "How are you doing?" and you want to say that there's nothing wrong with you, the proper phrase is "I'm doing well". As above, "good" is an adjective, "well" is an adverb. Though in this case, "good" would be a noun.
24. "Rob" and "steal" don't mean the same thing. "My wallet was robbed" is incorrect; you mean either "My wallet was stolen" or "I was robbed of my wallet". You rob a person when you steal their property. (Though if a thief stole the money from your wallet, but left the wallet, you could say that your wallet was robbed of its money.) And this only applies if the wallet was stolen from your person; if it was stolen from your house (while you were out), you were burgled. Or "burglarized" if you live in America. (In legal terms, "burglary" actually means "entry into a person's house with intent to commit a crime" - it doesn't matter whether you actually commited the crime or not, just the act of entering itself constitutes burglary.)
25. "And" and "or". You wouldn't think people would get these mixed up, but you'd be surprised. "And" is intersection, "or" is union. This is particularly noticeable on shop signs that state "Do not consume food and drink in this shop" - which essentially means that it's alright to consume one or the other as long as you're not consuming both. "Do not consume food or drink in this shop" is probably the intended meaning. To clarify: "A and B" means both of them, "A or B" means either or both of them and "Either A or B" means either (but not both) of them. Also, "both" and "either" are only used when there are two items, no more. "Both A and B" is right, as is "Either A or B", but "Both A, B and C" and "Either A, B, or C" are wrong. It's just "A, B and C" or "A, B, or C".
26. "Suspicious" is an emotion. A bag cannot be suspicious any more than it can be happy or sad or angry. When you see a bag lying on its own in the middle of a shopping centre, you are suspicious of the bag, the bag itself is suspect.
27. One of the biggest factors for my declining faith in humanity is the fact that people still can't get your/you're and their/there/they're right. Come on, people, you learn this in primary school. "Your" is possessive, meaning "belonging to you". "Where's your money?" "You're" is a contraction of "you are" (note the apostrophe, which denotes a contraction). "You're going to be bankrupt if you keep spending money like that." "Their" means "belonging to them". "Their shop has lots of nice things." "There" means "in that location". "I often go there to buy things." "They're" is a contraction of "they are". "They're making a lot of money from sales."
Often, when words become possessive, they add "'s" to the end - for example, "belonging to Michael" would be "Michael's". However, pronouns are the exception to this rule.
First person pronouns: I, my, mine, me. "I have a banana. It's my banana. The banana is mine. The banana belongs to me."
Second person: You, your, yours, you. "You have a banana. It's your banana. The banana is yours. The banana belongs to you." (NOT "your's")
Third person male: He, his, his, him. "He has a banana. It's his banana. The banana is his. The banana belongs to him." (NOT "he's", that would mean "he is")
Third person female: She, her, hers, her. "She has a banana. It's her banana. The banana is hers. The banana belongs to her." (NOT "her's")
Third person plural/gender-neutral: They, their, theirs, them. "They have a banana. It's their banana. The banana is theirs. The banana belongs to them." (NOT "their's")
Third person gender-neutral: It, its, its, it. "It has a banana. It's its banana. The banana is its. The banana belongs to it." (Note: "It's" = "it is". "Its" = "belonging to it".)
First person plural: We, our, ours, us. "We have a banana. It's our banana. The banana is ours. The banana belongs to us." (NOT "our's")
Interrogative: Who, whose, whose, whom. "Who has a banana? It's whose banana? The banana is whose? The banana belongs to whom?" (Note: As with it's/its above, "who's" means "who is". So "The banana is who's?" would mean "The banana is who is?" which makes no sense.)
(Second note: I'm aware that the phrasing for the "who" example above is rather awkward, but it was done for the sake of making those examples similar to the others in the list. A more natural way to write the questions would be "Whose banana is it?" and "To whom does the banana belong?")
Old-fashioned informal second person: Thou, thy, thine, thee. "Thou hast a banana. It's thy banana. The banana is thine. The banana belongs to thee." (Some people still use this pronoun, particularly in Yorkshire, England and other counties). However, "thine" is also used in place of "thy" when the following word begins with a vowel. So it would be "thy banana", but "thine apple". Similarly, in old-fashioned speech, "mine" would replace "my" when the next word begins with a vowel, so "Mine apple is red" would be correct. However, nowadays, we would say "My apple is red".
"One", when used as a pronoun, is the only one that doesn't follow this rule. "One has a banana. It's one's banana. The banana is one's. The banana belongs to one." "Ones" would be the plural form of the number "one" (such as for house door numbers or something - "How many ones do you have in stock?").
28. "Ye olde" is pronounced "the old", not "yee ol-dee" or whatever. The "ye" isn't actually a "ye", but a letter called "thorn" that isn't commonly used in English anymore. This letter was often used as a shorthand for "the" (due to being pronounced like a hard "th", as in "the" or "them"), and in certain writing styles looked a bit like a y with a superscript e, hence it being misread as "ye". ("Ye" was actually the word for "you" in those times, so "ye olde" would actually mean "you old".) The "e" on the end of "olde" is because in those days English followed the rules of French (more or less), and in French, the last letter of a word is silent unless it's followed by an "e", so the "e" was there to indicate that the "d" was pronounced and not silent.
29. "Quote" is a verb. The noun is "quotation". (Really, this might actually be a language shift in progress, since it's so common, but pedants will still get upset if you say something like "It's a quote from my favourite movie".) And on a related note, "quoth" as in "Quoth the Raven" is an old-fashioned word for "said"; it's not the past tense of "quote", that would be "quoted".
30. "Which" and "that" are pretty much synonymous. The only difference is that "which" has a comma before it, whereas "that" doesn't. Compare these two sentences: "I picked up the gun, which was on the table" and "I picked up the gun that was on the table". There is a minor difference in implication between the sentences, however. In the first sentence, the implied meaning is "I picked up the gun, which happened to be on the table." In the second sentence, the implied meaning is "I picked up the specific gun that was on the table, not any other gun."
31. "Dissimilar" means "not similar", "different". It doesn't mean the same thing as "similar". You wouldn't think people would get this wrong, but you'd be surprised. Even JonTron gets this wrong in one of his videos (his Bubsy video), even though JonTron often seems knowledgeable about spelling and grammar. (He may have meant to say "not dissimilar" and just accidentally omitted the "not".)
32. Let me write this in capitals to make it clear: APOSTROPHES DO NOT MAKE A PLURAL. The plural of, for instance, "cake" is "cakes", NOT "cake's". "Cake's" is a contraction of "cake is", as in "Cake's tasty, but unhealthy." (The possible exception to this is letters, which are difficult to pluralise in print anyway: "i" might be pluralised as "i's" to avoid confusion with the word "is". Of course, you can get around this by using quotation marks, e.g. "How many 'i's and 's's are there in 'Mississippi'?")
33. The plural of "octopus" is "octopuses", not "octopi". I will sic an octopus on anyone that says "octopi", or at least I would if I had one. "Octopus" is a Greek-derived word, it has no business having a Latin plural. (If you want to get really pedantic, the plural should be "octopodes".)
34. And the plural of "ninja" is "ninja". Not "ninjas". Japanese words don't have plural forms.
35. Quotation marks (or "quotes" in informal speech) are used to denote speech ("Get to da choppa!" Arnie yelled), to indicate that you're talking about a word itself, rather than the thing the word describes ("Octopus" comes from the Greek for "eight feet"), or to indicate disdain or sarcasm (No one laughed at the comedian's "jokes"). They are not used for emphasis. To emphasise a word, use bold, italics, underline, or CAPITALS (or a combination of two or more of these things), not quotation marks.
36. And speaking of quotation marks, double quotes are used for speech or for quoting things. If there's a quotation inside a quotation, indicate the nested quotation with single quotation marks. For example:
"He told me 'Take the first left turn you see,' so I did that, and now I don't know where I am," he thought.
Punctuation always goes inside the quotation marks. No exceptions. Parts of speech in the middle of a sentence end with a comma, unless they're questions (which end with a question mark) or exclamations (which end with an exclamation mark). They end with a full stop only at the end of a sentence.
37. Brackets and punctuation. If the bracketed statement is a complete sentence in itself, the punctuation at the end (a full stop, question mark, etc.) goes inside the brackets. (This is an example of such a sentence.) If the bracketed segment is only part of the sentence, the punctuation goes outside the brackets, (as in this example here).
38. The only words in English that are capitalised are words at the beginning of a sentence, words in titles (with some exceptions) and proper nouns. Nouns (other than proper nouns) are not capitalised. English is not German. We don't capitalise every noun. (We used to, but this practice has long since died out.)
39. Learn to title case, people. It's not hard. The basic rules:
Note: These words can be capitalised if they are part of a two-word compound verb. For instance, "Hold On to Your Dream", a song by Stratovarius, has "on" capitalised (despite it being a preposition with fewer than five letters) because it's part of the compound verb "hold on". Similarly, "Come On Eileen", the famous song by Dexys Midnight Runners, capitalises "on" because it's part of the compound verb "come on".
40. A desert (one s, pronounced "DE-zert") is an area with low rainfall. A dessert (two 's's, pronounced "de-ZERT") is a sweet course after a meal. "Desert" (one s, pronounced "de-ZERT") is a verb meaning "to leave" or "to abandon". The phrase meaning "get what's coming to you" is "get your just deserts", not "just desserts". "Deserts" in this case means "something you deserve". It's pronounced like "desserts", but spelled "deserts".
41. The difference between "amount" and "quantity". You have an amount of something uncountable, such as water, and a quantity (or "number") of something countable, such as cups. This also ties in to the difference between "less" and "fewer"; "less" is for uncountable (also known as "mass") nouns, "fewer" is for countable nouns. For instance, if you have three cups of water and you take one away, you have less water (uncountable) and fewer cups (countable). However, in mathematics, a lower number is always "less than" a higher number. Those signs in shop checkout aisles should read "Ten items or fewer", not "Ten items or less".
42. A phobia is specifically an IRRATIONAL fear of something, i.e. an illogical fear of something that isn't particularly harmful or scary. For instance, you can have a phobia of butterflies (which most people find beautiful and certainly aren't harmful to humans), but being afraid of sharks or tigers or snakes isn't a phobia (unless it's so bad that you freak out upon even seeing a picture or a video of them), because those animals are legitimately dangerous, therefore the fear is perfectly rational.
43. An asteroid is a relatively small object made up of rock, carbon or metal that orbits the Sun. A comet is a relatively small object made up of dirt and ices that orbits the Sun and leaves a trail behind it (made up of said dirt and ices) when it gets close to the Sun. A small fragment that breaks off an asteroid or comet is a meteoroid. "Meteor" or "shooting star" refers to the streak of light seen behind a meteoroid as it burns up in the atmosphere. When it lands, the burnt/frozen rock left behind is called a meteorite. There's a simple rhyme to remember it by: "In the void, meteoroid. On the site, meteorite. Neither/nor, meteor."
44. "Literally" is misused in more ways than people realise. We all know that it's not a generic intensifier (though it seems to be heading that way despite our best efforts to stop it), but what fewer people know is that it actually means "I am using the exact meaning of these words, not a metaphorical or idiomatic meaning". For instance, saying "I was tied to the bed this morning, so I literally couldn't get out of bed" is incorrect, because there's no metaphorical or idiomatic meaning to the phrase "I couldn't get out of bed". This is an example of the correct way to use literally:
"Last time I went to the cinema, I was glued to my seat the whole time."
"Wow, was the movie that exciting?"
"No, I mean I was literally glued to my seat. I didn't notice someone had put glue on it."
This is correct, because there is an idiomatic meaning to the phrase "to be glued to one's seat" - "to be totally engrossed in whatever you're watching". Another point is that a lot of people who correct others for misusing the word "literally" say something like "You mean 'figuratively'." This is also incorrect, as "figuratively" wouldn't have the same impact that "literally" does - in fact, it would weaken the sentence overall. What they ACTUALLY mean is an actual intensifier like "really" or "extremely".
45. "Waiting on someone" means performing the job of a waiter or waitress. If you're standing around looking at your watch and wondering where they are, you're waiting for them.
46. Whether band names should be treated as singular or plural. There's no official consensus, but here's my opinion - if the band name is singular, treat the band as singular. "Nirvana is a good band." If the band name is plural, treat the band as plural. "The Beatles are a good band." ("Beatles" is a deliberate misspelling of "beetles", as in the insect, so it's a plural.)
47. "E.g." and "i.e." are not interchangeable - they mean different things. "E.g." stands for "exempli gratia", Latin meaning "to give an example" or "for the sake of example", and is used to, well, give an example. "Citrus fruits, e.g. oranges and lemons..." "I.e." stands for "id est", Latin for "that is", and is used to give clarification to a preceding statement. "When we saw that we were losing the battle, we made a rapid tactical withdrawal, i.e. we ran away." You can remember it better by thinking of "e.g." as "example given" and "i.e." as "in effect" or "in essence".
48. Using an Oxford comma (i.e. putting a comma before the "and" in a list of things) is only correct when not doing so changes the meaning of the sentence. The most famous example on the Internet is "We invited the strippers, JFK, and Stalin" vs. "We invited the strippers, JFK and Stalin". As you can tell just by reading, the extra comma changes the meaning of the sentence. However, saying something like "I need to get bread, eggs, and milk from the shop" is incorrect, because removing the comma doesn't change the meaning of the sentence. "I need to get bread, eggs and milk from the shop" is the right way to go. Also, this only applies to lists of three or more items - if you have two items, it's just "I need to get bread and milk from the shop", not "I need to get bread, and milk from the shop." Though that last sentence could be correct if you were implying you were getting the bread from somewhere else, like a bakery or something. "And" should only be used once in the list, unless you have two items linked by an "and" treated as one lexical unit. For instance, "For breakfast, I usually have sausages, bacon, and bread and butter" is correct, because "bread and butter" is being treated as a single lexical unit.
49. People who say "social medias" are forgetting that "media" is already a plural. The singular is "medium". (In Latin words, "-um" changes to "-a" in plural, so "stadium" becomes "stadia" and "forum" becomes "fora").
50. The simple past form of the verb "to burn" is "burned", as in "I touched a hot stove and it burned me." "Burnt" is an adjective, as in "I left the bread in the toaster for too long, so now my toast is burnt." Saying something like "The stove burnt me" or "I burnt the toast" is wrong.
51. If you want to separate items in a list, use commas, not "and" or "or".
Correct: I enjoy swimming, reading, writing and cooking.
Wrong: I enjoy swimming and reading and writing and cooking.
Correct: Do you want rice, chips or peas with your dinner?
Wrong: Do you want rice or chips or peas with your dinner?
(Note: "Chips" is being used in the British English sense here, i.e. what Americans would call "fries". What Americans call "chips", we call "crisps".)
52. Learn the difference between simple past and past participle. Take the verb "to drink", for example.
Simple past: I drank five cups of coffee yesterday. (Not "I drunk")
Past participle: I have drunk three cups of coffee so far today. (Not "I have drank")
For many verbs in English, the simple past and past participle are the same (i.e. "I only slept for three hours last night" (simple past) vs. "I have slept through class many times" (past participle).) Some irregular ones are:
Format: Present > simple past > past participle
Run > ran > run
Swim > swam > swum
Eat > ate > eaten
See > saw > seen (Note: The correct form is "I saw it" or "I have seen it". Saying "I seen it" makes you sound like a hick.)
Smell > smelled > smelt
Fly > flew > flown
Slay > slew > slain
Go > went > gone
Fall > fell > fallen
Take > took > taken
Give > gave > given
Draw > drew > drawn
Show > showed > shown
Speak > spoke > spoken
Throw > threw > thrown
Sow > sowed > sown (means to scatter seeds in a field)
Sew > sewed > sewn (means to make or mend something using a needle and thread)
Dive > dove > dived
Shine > shone > shined
Spin > span > spun
Ring > rang > rung
Non-native speakers might fall into the trap of thinking "think" follows the same pattern (as in "think > thank > thunk", but it doesn't. It actually goes "think > thought > thought." "Thank" is a different word entirely, and "thunk" is only used in vernacular and again makes you sound like a hick. Unless it's a sound effect.)
53. In formal logic, "sound", "valid" and "true" are not synonymous. An argument is true if it is factually accurate. An argument is valid if it is impossible for its conclusion to be false while its premises are true. An argument is sound if it is both valid and true. For example: "All dogs are animals. All cats are animals. Therefore, all turtles are animals." This argument is true (all turtles are indeed animals), but it's invalid because whether or not dogs and cats are animals has nothing to do with whether or not all turtles are animals. "All animals are dogs. All dogs have four legs. Therefore, all animals have four legs" is a valid argument, but false (not all animals are dogs, and not all animals have four legs). "All terriers are dogs. All dogs have four legs. Therefore, all terriers have four legs" is a sound argument, because it's both valid and true.
54. "Begging the question" does not mean the same thing as "raising the question". It's incorrect to say "if you didn't put the shaved chocolate in my coffee, it begs the question of who did". "Begging the question", also known as "petitio principii" (Latin for "pursuit/attack of the source"), refers to a specific logical fallacy where you mistake the argument for the evidence, e.g. "If you want to know which of these snakes is poisonous, eat one. If it kills you, it's poisonous." This is petitio principii because the idea is to know which one is poisonous so you can avoid being killed by it.
55. "Dice" is plural. The singular is "die". You roll a die or roll two dice, you do not roll a dice. Rolling a dice is like walking a dogs. (And if I catch you pluralising it as "dices", you'd better start running.) "Dices" is acceptable as the third person present form of the verb "to dice", as in "She dices with death regularly".
56. "Fast" is an adverb. "The car was very fast" is wrong - it'd be like saying "The car was very quickly". "The car moved very fast" would be the correct way to say it. This is why "fastly" is incorrect, since you're putting the common adverb ending "-ly" on a word that's already an adverb to begin with.
57. The plural of mongoose is either mongoose or mongooses, not mongeese. The word has nothing to do etymologically with the word "goose", it comes from the Portuguese "mangus".
58. All names of Pokémon, and the word Pokémon itself, are both singular and plural. You can have one Pikachu or you can have ten Pikachu, but you can't have ten Pikachus. And speaking of Pokémon, a few of their names get commonly misspelled:
Ninetales, not Ninetails
Victreebel, not Victreebell
Gastly, not Ghastly
Onix, not Onyx
59. A prequel is an instalment of a series that is released after another instalment but chronologically takes place before it. It does not mean a previous instalment. Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace is a prequel to Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope, since it was released after it but takes place before it in the timeline. However, it is not a prequel to Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones, since it was released before that movie was. The term for an instalment released after another but chronologically set in between two previous instalments is an interquel.
60. "Lose" is the opposite of "win" ("I hope I don't lose the game") or the opposite of "find" ("Did you lose your car keys again?"). "Loose" is the opposite of "tight" ("My belt was too loose, so my trousers kept slipping down.").
61. Learn the difference between "to", "too" and "two". "To" is a particle, preposition, or adverb, with many different meanings, including "in the direction of, and arriving at" ("I'm going to the shops"), "for the purpose of" ("He drank to their health") and used to indicate result of action ("He was burned to a crisp"), among many other uses. "Too" is an adverb meaning "also" ("Are you coming too?") or "to an excessive degree" ("The soup is too hot."). "Two" is the number after "one" ("I have two cats.").
62. Gender non-binary (also known as non-binary, NB, or enby) isn't a specific gender identity, it's an umbrella term referring to all gender identities that aren't specifically masculine or feminine. Agender, gender-neutral, and genderfluid people are all non-binary.
63. Agnostic and atheist are not synonyms and should not be confused. Atheists do not believe in any form of gods or higher powers at all. Agnostics believe that it is impossible to know for sure whether or not a higher power exists.
64. The phrase "main protagonist", seen far too often on fandom sites and elsewhere on the internet, is redundant. The word "protagonist" means "main character", or more literally "first character". This means that a story, by definition, can only have one protagonist. The second most important character is the deuteragonist, and the third is the tritagonist. The antagonist is the character who creates problems for the protagonist. Note also that a protagonist is not necessarily a hero, and an antagonist is not necessarily a villain, which is why the tropes "Villain Protagonist" and "Hero Antagonist" exist. The only time there can be more than one protagonist is if the story is told from the perspective of a group of people who are all equally important, which would still mean there'd be no "main" protagonist, since none of them is more important than the others.
65. "None" means "not one", and takes a singular verb. "None of these apples is rotten" is correct, even though it sounds wrong, because you're essentially saying "Not one of these apples is rotten".
66. While often thought of nowadays as slang and bad grammar, originally the word "ain't" was a perfectly acceptable and correct shortening of "am not", as in "I'm far too busy tonight, so I ain't going to the party". It was when peasants also started using it that the word fell out of fashion and became thought of as "bad English".
67. "Vulgar" doesn't mean "rude", it just means "common", as in "the vulgar masses" = "the common people". It got the "rude" definition because of the stereotype of common people having bad manners.
68. A song contains singing. That's why it's called a song. If it just contains music with no singing, it's called a piece, or sometimes a track.
69. There is no style of music called "rap music". "Rap" or "rapping" is a specific style of doing vocals, involving speaking the words in rhythm rather than singing them. Calling a track by, say, Eminem "rap music" is like calling a track by The Beatles "sing music". The proper term for the musical style used by Eminem and similar artists is "hip-hop". And the two are not mutually-inclusive - it is possible to have hip-hop without rapping, and it is possible to have rapping without hip-hop. For instance, Linkin Park and Rage Against the Machine perform songs in rock or metal style with rapping vocals.
70. Vertigo does not mean fear of heights. You can thank Alfred Hitchcock for popularising that misconception. Vertigo is a specific condition of dizziness where the sufferer feels like they're moving when they're standing or sitting still, and can happen no matter what elevation the person is at.
71. "Definitely" and "definitively" aren't synonyms, despite being similar words. "Definitely" means "absolutely", "certainly" - "This is definitely Manchester, there's the Manchester Town Hall right there." "Definitively" means "in a way that is not only decisive, but also conclusive and final" - "The doctors definitively confirmed that I had broken my leg" (in other words, they confirmed it once and for all).
1. Don't get "etc." and "and so on" mixed up. "Etc." (short for "et cetera", Latin for "and the rest") is used to imply a continuing list of different items. For example, "They had all different kinds of fruits: apples, pears, peaches, plums, etc." This implies that there were other, different kinds of fruits there other than the ones that were already mentioned. "And so on", on the other hand, implies repetition; e.g. "The song 'Around the World' by Daft Punk has lyrics that go 'Around the world, around the world, around the world, around the world' and so on". This means that the lyrics repeat the phrase "around the world" over and over. And for the love of all deities, it's "etc.", not "and etc." "Et" means "and". "And etc." basically means "And and the rest". Also, "etc." is used for lists of things. For lists of people or places, use "et al." (short for "et alii" (people) or "et alibi" (places)).
2. Wondering when to use "who" and when to use "whom"? Try replacing it with "he/him" or "they/them" and see which one makes sense. Example: "Who was shot?" "He was shot". "He" works here, so use "who". But "Who did he shoot?" - "He shot he" - no. He shot him. So "Whom did he shoot?" is correct.
3. Similarly, you can work out whether to use "and I" or "and me" by stripping away everything but the first person pronoun. "Steve shot John and I", when stripped down, would be "Steve shot I", which is wrong, so "Steve shot John and me" is right. "Steve and me shot John", when stripped down, would be "Me shot John", which is also wrong, so "Steve and I shot John" is right. Grammatically, that is.
4. "Myself" is a reflexive pronoun, and describes things that you do to yourself, e.g. "I touch myself" (and if you do, please keep it private). "Someone like myself" is wrong, because there's no verb in that sentence. "Someone like me" is the correct way to say it. Similarly, "yourself" is only used for verbs that "you" are both doing and receiving, i.e. "Did you hurt yourself?" is correct (the person is both doing the hurting and being hurt), but "A pretty girl like yourself" is wrong, because again, no verb is involved. "A pretty girl like you" is the way to go.
5. "The reason [blah blah blah] is because [blah blah blah]" is probably one of the most frequent grammatical mistakes ever, to the point many don't even realise it's an error to begin with. The reason it is an error is because (see what I did there?) "because" begins an adverbial phrase, which cannot act as a predicate noun or predicate adjective modifying the subject "reason". The predicate, by the way, is the part of the sentence that says something about the subject or object; for example, in the sentence "The dog barked very loudly", "The dog" is the subject and "barked very loudly" is the predicate. A way to fix the error with "because" would either be to replace "because" with "that", turning it into a noun phrase, or rewrite the sentence to remove "reason". For instance, "The reason he shot me is because I called him fat" would be incorrect. Either "He shot me because I called him fat" or "The reason he shot me is that I called him fat" would work.
6. To substitute X for Y means to get rid of Y and replace it with X, not the other way around. "In hot weather, I substitute jeans for shorts" means that in hot weather, you wear jeans instead of shorts. "Substitute shorts for jeans" is what you probably meant to say, though "substitute jeans with shorts" would also work (and "replace" instead of "substitute" works even better).
7. "May" and "might" are very similar words, and interchangeable most of the time. However, if you want to talk about something that could have happened in the past, but didn't, then you can only use "might". For example, "If the ambulance had arrived sooner, the man might have survived" is correct, as it tells us the man died (he could have survived, if the ambulance had arrived sooner, but he didn't). "If the ambulance had arrived sooner, the man may have survived" is incorrect, as it indicates ambiguity as to whether he survived or not. In most other cases, though, you can use both words: "I may go to the cinema tomorrow" and "I might go to the cinema tomorrow" are both correct.
8. Learn your conditionals. There are four types of conditional clause in English. The first is the zero conditional, used for general truths and general habits, which is "if + present simple, present simple". For example, "If you add two and two, you get four". The second type, the first conditional, is used for future events that are possible or likely to happen. The formula for this one is "If + present simple, will + infinitive". Example: "If it rains later, we will stay at home". The second conditional is used either for impossible things in the present, or unlikely things in the future, and takes the form of "if + past simple, would + infinitive". For example, "If I won the lottery, I would go to Japan". The final type, the third conditional, describes things that didn't happen in the past and what would have happened if they did, and goes "if + past perfect, would + have + past participle". "If I had studied, I would have passed the exam".
9. Subjunctive mood is a thing, people. Use it. "I wish I was a bird" is wrong, unless you're saying that you wish you had been a bird in the past (and even then, it should be "I wish I had been a bird"). "I wish I were a bird" is correct. And on that note, it's subjunctive mood, not subjunctive tense. Tenses are to do with time: past, present, future, etc.
10. The phrase is "hold the fort", not "hold down the fort". "Hold" in this case means "defend", not "weigh down" or "physically restrain" or anything like that.
11. There are two rules of English grammar that actually don't exist, despite many people saying that they do. Those are "don't end a sentence with a preposition" and "don't split infinitives". These rules were made up by Victorian schoolmasters attempting to make English grammar follow the rules of Latin grammar, which makes about as much sense as trying to make it follow the rules of Japanese grammar. It's fine to boldly split an infinitive, and a preposition is okay to end a sentence with.
12. This is more definition than grammar, but people will often say of these () "Those aren't brackets, they're parentheses". Parentheses are a type of bracket, also called round brackets. Other types of brackets are square brackets [], curly brackets {} and angle brackets <>, also called chevrons.
13. To be jealous means that you're afraid that something you own will be taken away from you. A jealous boyfriend/girlfriend is one that's worried that they'll lose their boyfriend/girlfriend to another person. When people say "I'm jealous of that person", what they usually mean is that they're envious of them. Also, don't get "envious" and "covetous" mixed up. "Covetous" means "They've got a really nice TV, I want it." "Envious" means "They've got a really nice TV, I want to get an even better one so I can one-up them." "Jealous" means "I've got a really nice TV, I hope my neighbours don't try to steal it."
14. "LEGO" is a trademark, and trademarks are adjectives. The term for the building blocks made by the LEGO company is "LEGO blocks" or "LEGO bricks", not "Legos". Calling them "Legos" is like calling them "bigs" or "hards". Also note that "LEGO" is properly written in all-caps.
15. "Disinterested" does not mean the same thing as "uninterested". "Disinterested" means "impartial, unbiased". It's possible to be interested in something in which you are a disinterested party. A judge should always be disinterested, but never uninterested, in the case before him or her.
16. "Factoid" is often used as if it meant "fact" or "piece of trivia", as in "Here's a little factoid for you". It actually means "something resembling a fact, but with no evidence to back it up" or "an invented fact that is believed to be true because of repeated use", much like "android" means "something resembling a man" ("andros" is ancient Greek for "man", as in "human").
17. A man is a male human. Man (with no article) means humanity or humankind in general. Neil Armstrong's famous moon landing quotation was "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind" - in other words, "That's one small step for a human, but a giant leap for humanity". For years, due to the sound quality of the transmission, people thought it was "That's one small step for man", which would make the whole thing paradoxical, since it would basically mean he was saying "One small step for humanity, one giant leap for humanity". However, the recording was recently analysed and it was discovered that he did actually say "a man", but the "a" was lost in transmission. There is no evidence of him saying "Good luck, Mr Gorsky", however.
18. The adjectival form of the verb "addict" is "addictive", not "addicting". "Addicting" would be the present continuous form of the verb, not the adjectival form. Saying that video games are addicting is basically saying that video games are, right now, in the process of making someone addicted to them.
19. A lot of people, including many English teachers, insist that "I feel bad" is only to be used to say that your sense of touch is functioning improperly, and that the proper phrase to say that you feel unwell is "I feel badly". This is complete nonsense, and in fact the inverse is true; in the statement "I feel bad", "bad" is a predicate adjective modifying the subject "I" and linked to it by the linking verb "feel". In the statement "I feel badly", "badly" is an adverb that modifies the verb "feel". This is yet another result of trying to make English follow the rules of Latin grammar - in Latin, the words "good" and "bad" are defining characteristics, akin to "saintly" and "evil". In Latin, "I feel well" or "I feel unwell" would be the typical answers to the question "How are you?", rather than "I feel good" or "I feel bad". In English, though, both "I feel good/bad" and "I feel well/unwell" are correct. As a rule, "feel" in the sense of feeling a certain way, "look" in the sense of looking a certain way (rather than looking at something), "sound", "smell", "taste" and all forms of "to be" do not take adverbs. "It tastes good" means that its taste is pleasing to you. "It tastes well" means that it's very good at tasting things.
20. If you describe a snake as "poisonous", it means that the snake will harm you if you eat it. While a few snakes do have this characteristic, most snakes are venomous, not poisonous.
21. "Nauseous" means "causing nausea", not "suffering from nausea" (that would be "nauseated"). "I feel nauseous" really means "I'm in a mood to make people sick". Just as poisonous things make you poisoned, nauseous things make you nauseated.
22. "If" and "whether" are similar words, but should not be mixed up. "Ask your doctor if this drug is right for you" means something like "If you determine that this drug is right for you, ask your doctor about it". Please, ask your doctor whether this drug is right for you. (And for all you pedants out there, yes, there should be a comma after "if" in the first example, but that changes the reading of the sentence.)
23. If you're "doing good", it means you're doing good deeds, such as charity work or helping people. If you're asked "How are you doing?" and you want to say that there's nothing wrong with you, the proper phrase is "I'm doing well". As above, "good" is an adjective, "well" is an adverb. Though in this case, "good" would be a noun.
24. "Rob" and "steal" don't mean the same thing. "My wallet was robbed" is incorrect; you mean either "My wallet was stolen" or "I was robbed of my wallet". You rob a person when you steal their property. (Though if a thief stole the money from your wallet, but left the wallet, you could say that your wallet was robbed of its money.) And this only applies if the wallet was stolen from your person; if it was stolen from your house (while you were out), you were burgled. Or "burglarized" if you live in America. (In legal terms, "burglary" actually means "entry into a person's house with intent to commit a crime" - it doesn't matter whether you actually commited the crime or not, just the act of entering itself constitutes burglary.)
25. "And" and "or". You wouldn't think people would get these mixed up, but you'd be surprised. "And" is intersection, "or" is union. This is particularly noticeable on shop signs that state "Do not consume food and drink in this shop" - which essentially means that it's alright to consume one or the other as long as you're not consuming both. "Do not consume food or drink in this shop" is probably the intended meaning. To clarify: "A and B" means both of them, "A or B" means either or both of them and "Either A or B" means either (but not both) of them. Also, "both" and "either" are only used when there are two items, no more. "Both A and B" is right, as is "Either A or B", but "Both A, B and C" and "Either A, B, or C" are wrong. It's just "A, B and C" or "A, B, or C".
26. "Suspicious" is an emotion. A bag cannot be suspicious any more than it can be happy or sad or angry. When you see a bag lying on its own in the middle of a shopping centre, you are suspicious of the bag, the bag itself is suspect.
27. One of the biggest factors for my declining faith in humanity is the fact that people still can't get your/you're and their/there/they're right. Come on, people, you learn this in primary school. "Your" is possessive, meaning "belonging to you". "Where's your money?" "You're" is a contraction of "you are" (note the apostrophe, which denotes a contraction). "You're going to be bankrupt if you keep spending money like that." "Their" means "belonging to them". "Their shop has lots of nice things." "There" means "in that location". "I often go there to buy things." "They're" is a contraction of "they are". "They're making a lot of money from sales."
Often, when words become possessive, they add "'s" to the end - for example, "belonging to Michael" would be "Michael's". However, pronouns are the exception to this rule.
First person pronouns: I, my, mine, me. "I have a banana. It's my banana. The banana is mine. The banana belongs to me."
Second person: You, your, yours, you. "You have a banana. It's your banana. The banana is yours. The banana belongs to you." (NOT "your's")
Third person male: He, his, his, him. "He has a banana. It's his banana. The banana is his. The banana belongs to him." (NOT "he's", that would mean "he is")
Third person female: She, her, hers, her. "She has a banana. It's her banana. The banana is hers. The banana belongs to her." (NOT "her's")
Third person plural/gender-neutral: They, their, theirs, them. "They have a banana. It's their banana. The banana is theirs. The banana belongs to them." (NOT "their's")
Third person gender-neutral: It, its, its, it. "It has a banana. It's its banana. The banana is its. The banana belongs to it." (Note: "It's" = "it is". "Its" = "belonging to it".)
First person plural: We, our, ours, us. "We have a banana. It's our banana. The banana is ours. The banana belongs to us." (NOT "our's")
Interrogative: Who, whose, whose, whom. "Who has a banana? It's whose banana? The banana is whose? The banana belongs to whom?" (Note: As with it's/its above, "who's" means "who is". So "The banana is who's?" would mean "The banana is who is?" which makes no sense.)
(Second note: I'm aware that the phrasing for the "who" example above is rather awkward, but it was done for the sake of making those examples similar to the others in the list. A more natural way to write the questions would be "Whose banana is it?" and "To whom does the banana belong?")
Old-fashioned informal second person: Thou, thy, thine, thee. "Thou hast a banana. It's thy banana. The banana is thine. The banana belongs to thee." (Some people still use this pronoun, particularly in Yorkshire, England and other counties). However, "thine" is also used in place of "thy" when the following word begins with a vowel. So it would be "thy banana", but "thine apple". Similarly, in old-fashioned speech, "mine" would replace "my" when the next word begins with a vowel, so "Mine apple is red" would be correct. However, nowadays, we would say "My apple is red".
"One", when used as a pronoun, is the only one that doesn't follow this rule. "One has a banana. It's one's banana. The banana is one's. The banana belongs to one." "Ones" would be the plural form of the number "one" (such as for house door numbers or something - "How many ones do you have in stock?").
28. "Ye olde" is pronounced "the old", not "yee ol-dee" or whatever. The "ye" isn't actually a "ye", but a letter called "thorn" that isn't commonly used in English anymore. This letter was often used as a shorthand for "the" (due to being pronounced like a hard "th", as in "the" or "them"), and in certain writing styles looked a bit like a y with a superscript e, hence it being misread as "ye". ("Ye" was actually the word for "you" in those times, so "ye olde" would actually mean "you old".) The "e" on the end of "olde" is because in those days English followed the rules of French (more or less), and in French, the last letter of a word is silent unless it's followed by an "e", so the "e" was there to indicate that the "d" was pronounced and not silent.
29. "Quote" is a verb. The noun is "quotation". (Really, this might actually be a language shift in progress, since it's so common, but pedants will still get upset if you say something like "It's a quote from my favourite movie".) And on a related note, "quoth" as in "Quoth the Raven" is an old-fashioned word for "said"; it's not the past tense of "quote", that would be "quoted".
30. "Which" and "that" are pretty much synonymous. The only difference is that "which" has a comma before it, whereas "that" doesn't. Compare these two sentences: "I picked up the gun, which was on the table" and "I picked up the gun that was on the table". There is a minor difference in implication between the sentences, however. In the first sentence, the implied meaning is "I picked up the gun, which happened to be on the table." In the second sentence, the implied meaning is "I picked up the specific gun that was on the table, not any other gun."
31. "Dissimilar" means "not similar", "different". It doesn't mean the same thing as "similar". You wouldn't think people would get this wrong, but you'd be surprised. Even JonTron gets this wrong in one of his videos (his Bubsy video), even though JonTron often seems knowledgeable about spelling and grammar. (He may have meant to say "not dissimilar" and just accidentally omitted the "not".)
32. Let me write this in capitals to make it clear: APOSTROPHES DO NOT MAKE A PLURAL. The plural of, for instance, "cake" is "cakes", NOT "cake's". "Cake's" is a contraction of "cake is", as in "Cake's tasty, but unhealthy." (The possible exception to this is letters, which are difficult to pluralise in print anyway: "i" might be pluralised as "i's" to avoid confusion with the word "is". Of course, you can get around this by using quotation marks, e.g. "How many 'i's and 's's are there in 'Mississippi'?")
33. The plural of "octopus" is "octopuses", not "octopi". I will sic an octopus on anyone that says "octopi", or at least I would if I had one. "Octopus" is a Greek-derived word, it has no business having a Latin plural. (If you want to get really pedantic, the plural should be "octopodes".)
34. And the plural of "ninja" is "ninja". Not "ninjas". Japanese words don't have plural forms.
35. Quotation marks (or "quotes" in informal speech) are used to denote speech ("Get to da choppa!" Arnie yelled), to indicate that you're talking about a word itself, rather than the thing the word describes ("Octopus" comes from the Greek for "eight feet"), or to indicate disdain or sarcasm (No one laughed at the comedian's "jokes"). They are not used for emphasis. To emphasise a word, use bold, italics, underline, or CAPITALS (or a combination of two or more of these things), not quotation marks.
36. And speaking of quotation marks, double quotes are used for speech or for quoting things. If there's a quotation inside a quotation, indicate the nested quotation with single quotation marks. For example:
"He told me 'Take the first left turn you see,' so I did that, and now I don't know where I am," he thought.
Punctuation always goes inside the quotation marks. No exceptions. Parts of speech in the middle of a sentence end with a comma, unless they're questions (which end with a question mark) or exclamations (which end with an exclamation mark). They end with a full stop only at the end of a sentence.
37. Brackets and punctuation. If the bracketed statement is a complete sentence in itself, the punctuation at the end (a full stop, question mark, etc.) goes inside the brackets. (This is an example of such a sentence.) If the bracketed segment is only part of the sentence, the punctuation goes outside the brackets, (as in this example here).
38. The only words in English that are capitalised are words at the beginning of a sentence, words in titles (with some exceptions) and proper nouns. Nouns (other than proper nouns) are not capitalised. English is not German. We don't capitalise every noun. (We used to, but this practice has long since died out.)
39. Learn to title case, people. It's not hard. The basic rules:
- Every word apart from the exceptions listed below is capitalised.
- The following words are not capitalised in titles:
- Prepositions that are shorter than five letters long
- Articles (the, a, an)
- Conjunctions shorter than five letters long
- All other words are capitalised. "Is" and "It" are meant to be capitalised in titles, even though they frequently aren't. (It's "My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic", not "My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic".)
- The first word in a title is always capitalised, no matter what it is.
Note: These words can be capitalised if they are part of a two-word compound verb. For instance, "Hold On to Your Dream", a song by Stratovarius, has "on" capitalised (despite it being a preposition with fewer than five letters) because it's part of the compound verb "hold on". Similarly, "Come On Eileen", the famous song by Dexys Midnight Runners, capitalises "on" because it's part of the compound verb "come on".
40. A desert (one s, pronounced "DE-zert") is an area with low rainfall. A dessert (two 's's, pronounced "de-ZERT") is a sweet course after a meal. "Desert" (one s, pronounced "de-ZERT") is a verb meaning "to leave" or "to abandon". The phrase meaning "get what's coming to you" is "get your just deserts", not "just desserts". "Deserts" in this case means "something you deserve". It's pronounced like "desserts", but spelled "deserts".
41. The difference between "amount" and "quantity". You have an amount of something uncountable, such as water, and a quantity (or "number") of something countable, such as cups. This also ties in to the difference between "less" and "fewer"; "less" is for uncountable (also known as "mass") nouns, "fewer" is for countable nouns. For instance, if you have three cups of water and you take one away, you have less water (uncountable) and fewer cups (countable). However, in mathematics, a lower number is always "less than" a higher number. Those signs in shop checkout aisles should read "Ten items or fewer", not "Ten items or less".
42. A phobia is specifically an IRRATIONAL fear of something, i.e. an illogical fear of something that isn't particularly harmful or scary. For instance, you can have a phobia of butterflies (which most people find beautiful and certainly aren't harmful to humans), but being afraid of sharks or tigers or snakes isn't a phobia (unless it's so bad that you freak out upon even seeing a picture or a video of them), because those animals are legitimately dangerous, therefore the fear is perfectly rational.
43. An asteroid is a relatively small object made up of rock, carbon or metal that orbits the Sun. A comet is a relatively small object made up of dirt and ices that orbits the Sun and leaves a trail behind it (made up of said dirt and ices) when it gets close to the Sun. A small fragment that breaks off an asteroid or comet is a meteoroid. "Meteor" or "shooting star" refers to the streak of light seen behind a meteoroid as it burns up in the atmosphere. When it lands, the burnt/frozen rock left behind is called a meteorite. There's a simple rhyme to remember it by: "In the void, meteoroid. On the site, meteorite. Neither/nor, meteor."
44. "Literally" is misused in more ways than people realise. We all know that it's not a generic intensifier (though it seems to be heading that way despite our best efforts to stop it), but what fewer people know is that it actually means "I am using the exact meaning of these words, not a metaphorical or idiomatic meaning". For instance, saying "I was tied to the bed this morning, so I literally couldn't get out of bed" is incorrect, because there's no metaphorical or idiomatic meaning to the phrase "I couldn't get out of bed". This is an example of the correct way to use literally:
"Last time I went to the cinema, I was glued to my seat the whole time."
"Wow, was the movie that exciting?"
"No, I mean I was literally glued to my seat. I didn't notice someone had put glue on it."
This is correct, because there is an idiomatic meaning to the phrase "to be glued to one's seat" - "to be totally engrossed in whatever you're watching". Another point is that a lot of people who correct others for misusing the word "literally" say something like "You mean 'figuratively'." This is also incorrect, as "figuratively" wouldn't have the same impact that "literally" does - in fact, it would weaken the sentence overall. What they ACTUALLY mean is an actual intensifier like "really" or "extremely".
45. "Waiting on someone" means performing the job of a waiter or waitress. If you're standing around looking at your watch and wondering where they are, you're waiting for them.
46. Whether band names should be treated as singular or plural. There's no official consensus, but here's my opinion - if the band name is singular, treat the band as singular. "Nirvana is a good band." If the band name is plural, treat the band as plural. "The Beatles are a good band." ("Beatles" is a deliberate misspelling of "beetles", as in the insect, so it's a plural.)
47. "E.g." and "i.e." are not interchangeable - they mean different things. "E.g." stands for "exempli gratia", Latin meaning "to give an example" or "for the sake of example", and is used to, well, give an example. "Citrus fruits, e.g. oranges and lemons..." "I.e." stands for "id est", Latin for "that is", and is used to give clarification to a preceding statement. "When we saw that we were losing the battle, we made a rapid tactical withdrawal, i.e. we ran away." You can remember it better by thinking of "e.g." as "example given" and "i.e." as "in effect" or "in essence".
48. Using an Oxford comma (i.e. putting a comma before the "and" in a list of things) is only correct when not doing so changes the meaning of the sentence. The most famous example on the Internet is "We invited the strippers, JFK, and Stalin" vs. "We invited the strippers, JFK and Stalin". As you can tell just by reading, the extra comma changes the meaning of the sentence. However, saying something like "I need to get bread, eggs, and milk from the shop" is incorrect, because removing the comma doesn't change the meaning of the sentence. "I need to get bread, eggs and milk from the shop" is the right way to go. Also, this only applies to lists of three or more items - if you have two items, it's just "I need to get bread and milk from the shop", not "I need to get bread, and milk from the shop." Though that last sentence could be correct if you were implying you were getting the bread from somewhere else, like a bakery or something. "And" should only be used once in the list, unless you have two items linked by an "and" treated as one lexical unit. For instance, "For breakfast, I usually have sausages, bacon, and bread and butter" is correct, because "bread and butter" is being treated as a single lexical unit.
49. People who say "social medias" are forgetting that "media" is already a plural. The singular is "medium". (In Latin words, "-um" changes to "-a" in plural, so "stadium" becomes "stadia" and "forum" becomes "fora").
50. The simple past form of the verb "to burn" is "burned", as in "I touched a hot stove and it burned me." "Burnt" is an adjective, as in "I left the bread in the toaster for too long, so now my toast is burnt." Saying something like "The stove burnt me" or "I burnt the toast" is wrong.
51. If you want to separate items in a list, use commas, not "and" or "or".
Correct: I enjoy swimming, reading, writing and cooking.
Wrong: I enjoy swimming and reading and writing and cooking.
Correct: Do you want rice, chips or peas with your dinner?
Wrong: Do you want rice or chips or peas with your dinner?
(Note: "Chips" is being used in the British English sense here, i.e. what Americans would call "fries". What Americans call "chips", we call "crisps".)
52. Learn the difference between simple past and past participle. Take the verb "to drink", for example.
Simple past: I drank five cups of coffee yesterday. (Not "I drunk")
Past participle: I have drunk three cups of coffee so far today. (Not "I have drank")
For many verbs in English, the simple past and past participle are the same (i.e. "I only slept for three hours last night" (simple past) vs. "I have slept through class many times" (past participle).) Some irregular ones are:
Format: Present > simple past > past participle
Run > ran > run
Swim > swam > swum
Eat > ate > eaten
See > saw > seen (Note: The correct form is "I saw it" or "I have seen it". Saying "I seen it" makes you sound like a hick.)
Smell > smelled > smelt
Fly > flew > flown
Slay > slew > slain
Go > went > gone
Fall > fell > fallen
Take > took > taken
Give > gave > given
Draw > drew > drawn
Show > showed > shown
Speak > spoke > spoken
Throw > threw > thrown
Sow > sowed > sown (means to scatter seeds in a field)
Sew > sewed > sewn (means to make or mend something using a needle and thread)
Dive > dove > dived
Shine > shone > shined
Spin > span > spun
Ring > rang > rung
Non-native speakers might fall into the trap of thinking "think" follows the same pattern (as in "think > thank > thunk", but it doesn't. It actually goes "think > thought > thought." "Thank" is a different word entirely, and "thunk" is only used in vernacular and again makes you sound like a hick. Unless it's a sound effect.)
53. In formal logic, "sound", "valid" and "true" are not synonymous. An argument is true if it is factually accurate. An argument is valid if it is impossible for its conclusion to be false while its premises are true. An argument is sound if it is both valid and true. For example: "All dogs are animals. All cats are animals. Therefore, all turtles are animals." This argument is true (all turtles are indeed animals), but it's invalid because whether or not dogs and cats are animals has nothing to do with whether or not all turtles are animals. "All animals are dogs. All dogs have four legs. Therefore, all animals have four legs" is a valid argument, but false (not all animals are dogs, and not all animals have four legs). "All terriers are dogs. All dogs have four legs. Therefore, all terriers have four legs" is a sound argument, because it's both valid and true.
54. "Begging the question" does not mean the same thing as "raising the question". It's incorrect to say "if you didn't put the shaved chocolate in my coffee, it begs the question of who did". "Begging the question", also known as "petitio principii" (Latin for "pursuit/attack of the source"), refers to a specific logical fallacy where you mistake the argument for the evidence, e.g. "If you want to know which of these snakes is poisonous, eat one. If it kills you, it's poisonous." This is petitio principii because the idea is to know which one is poisonous so you can avoid being killed by it.
55. "Dice" is plural. The singular is "die". You roll a die or roll two dice, you do not roll a dice. Rolling a dice is like walking a dogs. (And if I catch you pluralising it as "dices", you'd better start running.) "Dices" is acceptable as the third person present form of the verb "to dice", as in "She dices with death regularly".
56. "Fast" is an adverb. "The car was very fast" is wrong - it'd be like saying "The car was very quickly". "The car moved very fast" would be the correct way to say it. This is why "fastly" is incorrect, since you're putting the common adverb ending "-ly" on a word that's already an adverb to begin with.
57. The plural of mongoose is either mongoose or mongooses, not mongeese. The word has nothing to do etymologically with the word "goose", it comes from the Portuguese "mangus".
58. All names of Pokémon, and the word Pokémon itself, are both singular and plural. You can have one Pikachu or you can have ten Pikachu, but you can't have ten Pikachus. And speaking of Pokémon, a few of their names get commonly misspelled:
Ninetales, not Ninetails
Victreebel, not Victreebell
Gastly, not Ghastly
Onix, not Onyx
59. A prequel is an instalment of a series that is released after another instalment but chronologically takes place before it. It does not mean a previous instalment. Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace is a prequel to Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope, since it was released after it but takes place before it in the timeline. However, it is not a prequel to Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones, since it was released before that movie was. The term for an instalment released after another but chronologically set in between two previous instalments is an interquel.
60. "Lose" is the opposite of "win" ("I hope I don't lose the game") or the opposite of "find" ("Did you lose your car keys again?"). "Loose" is the opposite of "tight" ("My belt was too loose, so my trousers kept slipping down.").
61. Learn the difference between "to", "too" and "two". "To" is a particle, preposition, or adverb, with many different meanings, including "in the direction of, and arriving at" ("I'm going to the shops"), "for the purpose of" ("He drank to their health") and used to indicate result of action ("He was burned to a crisp"), among many other uses. "Too" is an adverb meaning "also" ("Are you coming too?") or "to an excessive degree" ("The soup is too hot."). "Two" is the number after "one" ("I have two cats.").
62. Gender non-binary (also known as non-binary, NB, or enby) isn't a specific gender identity, it's an umbrella term referring to all gender identities that aren't specifically masculine or feminine. Agender, gender-neutral, and genderfluid people are all non-binary.
63. Agnostic and atheist are not synonyms and should not be confused. Atheists do not believe in any form of gods or higher powers at all. Agnostics believe that it is impossible to know for sure whether or not a higher power exists.
64. The phrase "main protagonist", seen far too often on fandom sites and elsewhere on the internet, is redundant. The word "protagonist" means "main character", or more literally "first character". This means that a story, by definition, can only have one protagonist. The second most important character is the deuteragonist, and the third is the tritagonist. The antagonist is the character who creates problems for the protagonist. Note also that a protagonist is not necessarily a hero, and an antagonist is not necessarily a villain, which is why the tropes "Villain Protagonist" and "Hero Antagonist" exist. The only time there can be more than one protagonist is if the story is told from the perspective of a group of people who are all equally important, which would still mean there'd be no "main" protagonist, since none of them is more important than the others.
65. "None" means "not one", and takes a singular verb. "None of these apples is rotten" is correct, even though it sounds wrong, because you're essentially saying "Not one of these apples is rotten".
66. While often thought of nowadays as slang and bad grammar, originally the word "ain't" was a perfectly acceptable and correct shortening of "am not", as in "I'm far too busy tonight, so I ain't going to the party". It was when peasants also started using it that the word fell out of fashion and became thought of as "bad English".
67. "Vulgar" doesn't mean "rude", it just means "common", as in "the vulgar masses" = "the common people". It got the "rude" definition because of the stereotype of common people having bad manners.
68. A song contains singing. That's why it's called a song. If it just contains music with no singing, it's called a piece, or sometimes a track.
69. There is no style of music called "rap music". "Rap" or "rapping" is a specific style of doing vocals, involving speaking the words in rhythm rather than singing them. Calling a track by, say, Eminem "rap music" is like calling a track by The Beatles "sing music". The proper term for the musical style used by Eminem and similar artists is "hip-hop". And the two are not mutually-inclusive - it is possible to have hip-hop without rapping, and it is possible to have rapping without hip-hop. For instance, Linkin Park and Rage Against the Machine perform songs in rock or metal style with rapping vocals.
70. Vertigo does not mean fear of heights. You can thank Alfred Hitchcock for popularising that misconception. Vertigo is a specific condition of dizziness where the sufferer feels like they're moving when they're standing or sitting still, and can happen no matter what elevation the person is at.
71. "Definitely" and "definitively" aren't synonyms, despite being similar words. "Definitely" means "absolutely", "certainly" - "This is definitely Manchester, there's the Manchester Town Hall right there." "Definitively" means "in a way that is not only decisive, but also conclusive and final" - "The doctors definitively confirmed that I had broken my leg" (in other words, they confirmed it once and for all).
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