Dave’s WW of EU: Nouning the Verb

I haven’t posted in this category in almost a year, and the only reason I do now is because of a classic error I saw this morning.
I got an e-mail that used the term on board, as in get everyone to agree with something as a verb. This is a paraphrase, but the sentence roughly [...]

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Dave’s WW of EU: Prepositions and Prepositionsal Phrases

Prepositions connect nouns and pronouns to another word or words in a sentence. The common rule for identifying a preposition is if it is something that you can do to a log or a barn. For example, you can stand IN a barn, ON a log, BEHIND a barn, UNDER a [...]

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Dave’s WW of EU: Transitive, Intransitive, & Linking Verbs

We all know what Verbs are, but there are three different classifications of Verbs.

Transitive Verbs—Verbs that require objects to be complete.
Intransitive Verbs—Verbs that do not require objects.
Linking Verbs—Verbs that connect (or link) the subject of the sentence to a noun or adjective.

Let’s take these separately.
Transitive Verbs
Transitive Verbs are verbs that have to do something [...]

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Dave’s WW of EU: Shibboleth

A shibboleth is a word that identifies you as being a member of a specific social, cultural, ethnical, or other group. The term comes from the Bible when, in ancient Israel, an outpost was set up at the crossing of the Jordan River. Anyone who attempted to cross was asked to say the word shibboleth. [...]

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Dave’s WW of EU: English Usage vs. English Grammar

We discuss English Usage vs. English Grammar in these posts frequently, but it might help to go through and define that better:

Usage = current conventions
Grammar = rules

Both usage and grammar are related, of course, because usage helps create grammar and grammar helps create usage.
Usage
Usage is more a matter of personal style than anything. Usage is [...]

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Dave’s WW of EU: Ellipsis Points

Ellipsis Points are those little dots you find ad the end of sentences. They have varied usage and even several different ways of using them  correctly: the three dot, the four dot, and the mixed methods. Personally, I use the mixed method because I feel it shows the maximum amount of information; that is what [...]

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Dave’s WW of EU: Count Nouns

Ever since I’ve lost access to write on my breaks at work, this particular part of my blog has truly suffered…. Here’s a promise to get back on track.
Today’s usage is one that I’m rather fond of because it was the first linguistic idea that really opened my eyes to the complexity and art of [...]

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Dave’s WW of EU: Abbreviations

Abbreviations are shortened forms of words. Generally speaking, an abbreviation is created by taking one or more syllables of a word or words and eliminating the rest. For example, the word abbreviation contains multiple syllables (a-bbre-vi-a-tion), and is created by taking the frist two or three syllables (abbr. or abbrev.). You can also use the [...]

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Dave’s WW of EU: Essential & Non-essential Clauses

We’ve already discussed both Dependent and Independent Clauses, and we already know that a clause is a group of related words that contain both a subject and a verb (predicate). But there is yet another classification of clauses: Essential and Non-essential.
Essential Clauses (also known as restrictive clauses) appear after nouns and are necessary to complete [...]

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Dave’s WW of EU: Independent Clauses

We briefly covered Independent Clauses when we talked about Dependent Clauses, but this is a full review.
Independent Clauses are clauses that can stand alone as complete sentences. They have both a subject and a verb.
Examples:

I went to work. I is the subject, went is the verb.

Don’t go upstairs. You is the implied subject, don’t go [...]

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