Getting to Grips with English

Don't be so negative...

We're living in a world that can easily give rise to negativity but being doubly negative is something we should really try to avoid! ... Well, at least in English grammar.

What is a double negative? It's when you find two negative parts in a sentence (where one is enough).

For example, 'She didn't know nothing before she went to university.' In this sentence the verb is already in the negative - didn't know - and is followed by another negative - nothing. So how could we change this sentence to make it correct? Try changing one or other of the parts:

• She knew nothing before she went to university.
• She didn't know anything before she went to university.

Other words like nothing to watch out for are not, hardly, barely and scarcely :

• 'Not all my friends don't have cars' would be better as 'not all my friends have cars'.
• 'They hardly ate nothing would' be better as 'they hardly at anything'.
• 'She couldn't barely stand up' would be better as 'she could barely stand up'.
• 'She wouldn't scarcely give me the time of day' would be better as 'she would scarcely give me the time of day'.

Some of these may look pretty obvious but you'd be amazed how often I am confronted with the double negative coming from my native English speaking clients and my foreign clients alike.

Taking Possession : Where does that possessive apostrophe go?

One of the most asked questions that we get at english4today.com is about the placement of the apostrophe for possessives. This is a 'young' blog so I'm going to answer it here for Trish Upham from Australia who writes:

I am a Virtual Assistant working with lawyers and regularly come across the problem of multiple possessives in legal documents. For instance, when a group of people is buying a company, none of us can agree on the correct way to type something like "Smith, Dunn, & Bradstreet's ownership". Or should it be "Smith's, Dunn's, and Bradstreet's"???

I would REALLY appreciate some expert opinion on this.

Thanks in anticipation!

Starting with your question first, Trish, the rule is that

• For joint ownership, show possession only on the last noun.
  So your second example,'Smith, Dunn, & Bradstreet's ownership', is correct. As is,
  There is always a great atmosphere at Joan and Max's parties.
• For individual possession, show possession on all of the nouns.
  Maire's, Pierre's and Hubert's cars were all burnt during the recent riots in Paris.
  Smith's, Dunn's and Bradstreet's lives may not have been wildy exciting.

Some other rules for the possesive apostrophe are:

• For singular and plural nouns that do not end in -s, form the possessive by
  adding -'s. The women's shelter, The dog's bone.
• For singular nouns that end in -s, (whether pronounced or unpronounced), form the possessive by adding -'s. Anthony Hughes's blog, The class's teacher.
• For plural nouns that end in –s, form the possessive by adding only an apostrophe.
  The books' covers were all damaged. The queens' powers were eroded over the centuries.
• For compound nouns, show possession at the end of the compound.
  The Queen Mary's last cruise was to New York. The Republic of Congo's government is not very stable.
• We do not use the possessive apostrophe with possessive pronouns (hers,
  theirs, yours, whose, and its).

Hope that has helped Trish. What is a 'virtual assistant' ... it sounds like one of those annoying little software beings Microsoft pops up in their programs all the time. If you let me know what it is I'll put it up here so that we can settle a dispute now raging in our office! I keep telling them that those Microsoft animated bugs would not be able to email us...

All about image

Yesterday, I answered a short question about contractions and got this reply from Vivien:

Thank you for providing the term and meaning of 'contractions'. Currently, I am working with an American '.com' company that is young and  struggling to be taken seriously. In reviewing their written correspondance to their customers I noticed they frequently use contractions. This is one of the business communication practices (amoung others) I will be attempting to dissuade them from using. Contractions are acceptable in casual communications however, are generally out of place in business communications. Thank you for your time, Miss Viv

It's a pretty formal sort of reply by today's standards using words that you could probably simplify to say the same thing - it says something about Vivien - at least about what she thinks is 'correct' business English. But is she right? This was my reply to her:

Dear Miss Viv - that really depends on the image that your company wants to project. English, like advertising, is capable of carrying a lot of sub-text 'message' and contractions can, of course, carry a message about the organization. If you want to create the idea that your customers are your friends then contractions would be one way of helping to create that impression. The more structured the English becomes the more formal will be the presentation and image - we are not living in an age where 'formal' is equated with 'good business' - take Skype as an example... young and onetime struggling, now rich and global and still using contractions!

I'm having contractions...

Vivien Hammel, one of my Online English Grammar readers wrote asking:

'What is the proper term for words which are joined by an apostrophe? This is something that bothers me. Yet one sees so much more (in business) than I recall at a school.

For example: you'll

Thank you for your time and consideration of my quesiton.'

Vivien, the proper term for this is a 'contraction'. We use it more and more, as you have noticed, in written English and use it all the time in spoken English. Some common contractions are:

• I'm for I am
• You'll / he'll / she'll for you will, he will, she will
• They're / we're / for they are / we are
• Don't for do not
• Won't for will not
• Can't for can not
• Aren't for are not

Although contractions such as would've for would have and should've for should have are common in spoken English they still don't enter into written English very often but with our 'need for speed' it proably won't be long before they do!

Grammar: What's all the fuss about?

When I was at school we just weren't taught English grammar. We certainly didn't miss it! The Latin and French teachers gave us plenty of grammar in those languages and escaping learning about English grammar seemed a very good thing to a ten year old.

It was the period when English teaching used a 'function based' approach - that is, you learnt the language in a context or for a particular function. This teaching 'fashion' was as true for native speakers growing up and learning about their own language as it was for speakers learning English as a second language.

After school I studied English Literature and Language at university where, perhaps amazingly, grammar still didn't feature that much. I did get a brief (and I mean 'brief') introduction to English grammar when I did a post-graduate teaching certificate but even then the emphasis was on teaching the English a student would use to buy a sandwich rather than on how the sentences were constructed - not all bad and certainly not worrying enough for me to stage a sit-in until we got more grammar tuition. After all, even the word 'grammar' seems to have an odour of dusty books, dryness and incomprehensible rules for sticking together mechanically what we all say naturally.

Some years later, in Geneva, I fronted up for a TEFL job (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) in a local language school. I was feeling pretty confident given my bundle of degrees and certificates and thought the job was in the bag. So when I was given an 'on the spot' test of how I would teach the Present Perfect I was left speechless with my degrees now looking no more useful than cleaning rags. I cobbled some rubbishy explanation together that didn't fool the school's director for one minute. Fortunately, I was given the chance to go away with a borrowed grammar book to come back again the following week for another test. So began my exploration of English grammar!

It was a little like being a cowboy and suddenly finding out just how useful a horse is! Once you get past your own preconceptions about the nature of grammar you find you're sitting on something incredibly useful. If you need to write, speak to people, work in English, learn another language, communicate ideas, prepare reports, manage people, study ... is there something I've left out? - that should include just about all of us - then learning about how English is put together and how you can put it together more effectively is an invaluable skill. Sure, there are parts of it, like learning anything (ever tried learning a computer programming language?) that are boring but the big picture, as it emerges is one that can't help but enrich your life. Grammar enriching my life, get outta here! But it's true. It's the foundation of the language and from that foundation, if you understand it, you can build exactly the sort of structures that you want and you'll feel far more comfortable and confident about every act of communication that you make.