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Common English Usage Misconceptions
This list comprises widespread modern beliefs about English language usage that are documented by a reliable source to be misconceptions. With no authoritative language academy, guidance on English language usage can come from many sources. This can create problems, as described by Reginald Close: Teachers and textbook writers often invent rules which their students and readers repeat and perpetuate. These rules are usually statements about English usage which the authors imagine to be, ''as a rule'', true. But statements of this kind are extremely difficult to formulate both simply and accurately. They are rarely altogether true; often only partially true; sometimes contradicted by usage itself. Sometimes the contrary to them is also true. Perceived violations of correct English usage elicit visceral reactions in many people. For example, respondents to a 1986 BBC poll were asked to submit "the three points of grammatical usage they most disliked". Participants stated that th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
English Language
English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the island of Great Britain. Existing on a dialect continuum with Scots, and then closest related to the Low Saxon and Frisian languages, English is genealogically West Germanic. However, its vocabulary is also distinctively influenced by dialects of France (about 29% of Modern English words) and Latin (also about 29%), plus some grammar and a small amount of core vocabulary influenced by Old Norse (a North Germanic language). Speakers of English are called Anglophones. The earliest forms of English, collectively known as Old English, evolved from a group of West Germanic ( Ingvaeonic) dialects brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the 5th century and further mutated by Norse-speaking Viking settlers starting in the 8t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Disputes In English Grammar
In the English language, there are grammatical constructions that many native speakers use unquestioningly yet certain writers call incorrect. Differences of usage or opinion may stem from differences between formal and informal speech and other matters of register, differences among dialects (whether regional, class-based, or other), and so forth. Disputes may arise when style guides disagree with each other, or when a guideline or judgement is confronted by large amounts of conflicting evidence or has its rationale challenged. Examples Some of the sources that consider some of the following examples incorrect consider the same examples to be acceptable in dialects other than Standard English or in an informal register; others consider certain constructions to be incorrect in any variety of English. On the other hand, many or all of the following examples are considered correct by some sources. * Generic ''you'' – e.g., "Brushing your teeth is a good habit" as opposed to "Br ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Conjunction (grammar)
In grammar, a conjunction ( abbreviated or ) is a part of speech that connects words, phrases, or clauses that are called the conjuncts of the conjunctions. That definition may overlap with that of other parts of speech and so what constitutes a "conjunction" must be defined for each language. In English, a given word may have several senses and be either a preposition or a conjunction, depending on the syntax of the sentence. For example, ''after'' is a preposition in "he left after the fight" but is a conjunction in "he left after they fought". In general, a conjunction is an invariable (non-inflected) grammatical particle that may or may not stand between the items conjoined. The definition of conjunction may also be extended to idiomatic phrases that behave as a unit with the same function, "as well as", "provided that". A simple literary example of a conjunction is "the truth of nature, ''and'' the power of giving interest" (Samuel Taylor Coleridge's ''Biographia Litera ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Henry Alford
Henry Alford (7 October 181012 January 1871) was an English churchman, theologian, textual critic, scholar, poet, hymnodist, and writer. Life Alford was born in London, of a Somerset family, which had given five consecutive generations of clergymen to the Anglican church. Alford's early years were passed with his widowed father, who was curate of Steeple Ashton in Wiltshire. He was a precocious boy, and before he was ten had written several Latin odes, a history of the Jews and a series of homiletic outlines. After a peripatetic school course he went up to Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1827 as a scholar. In 1832 he was 34th wrangler and 8th classic, and in 1834 was made fellow of Trinity. Service He had already taken orders, and in 1835 began his eighteen-year tenure of the vicarage of Wymeswold in Leicestershire, from which seclusion the twice-repeated offer of a colonial bishopric failed to draw him. He was Hulsean lecturer at Cambridge in 1841–1842, and steadily ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Uni00
Uni or UNI may refer to: Entertainment * Uni Records, a division of MCA, formally called Universal City Records *"U.N.I.", a song by Ed Sheeran from ''+'' (''Plus'') *Uni, a species in the Neopets Trading Card Game *Uni, a character in the anime ''Reborn!'' *Uni, a character in the television series ''Dungeons and Dragons'' *Uni, a fictional character in the ''Hyperdimension Neptunia Mk2'' video game Organizations *UNI Financial Cooperation, a Canadian credit union *Ente Nazionale Italiano di Unificazione, an Italian technical standards organization *UNI global union, an international trade union federation * The University of Northern Iowa, a university in the United States * The National University of Engineering, a university in Peru * UNI, an alternative name for the Northern Iowa Panthers, the athletic program of the University of Northern Iowa * United News of India, an Indian news agency * National Union of Independents (other), the name of several political pa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
University Of Chicago
The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the best universities in the world and it is among the most selective in the United States. The university is composed of an undergraduate college and five graduate research divisions, which contain all of the university's graduate programs and interdisciplinary committees. Chicago has eight professional schools: the Law School, the Booth School of Business, the Pritzker School of Medicine, the Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice, the Harris School of Public Policy, the Divinity School, the Graham School of Continuing Liberal and Professional Studies, and the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering. The university has additional campuses and centers in London, Paris, Beijing, Delhi, and Hong Kong, as well as in downt ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shibboleth
A shibboleth (; hbo, , šībbōleṯ) is any Convention (norm), custom or tradition, usually a choice of phrasing or even a single word, that distinguishes one group of people from another. Shibboleths have been used throughout history in many societies as passwords, simple ways of self-identification, signaling loyalty and affinity, maintaining traditional segregation, or protecting from real or perceived threats. Origin The term originates from the Hebrew language, Hebrew word (), which means the part of a plant containing grain, such as Ear (botany), the head of a stalk of wheat or rye; or less commonly (but arguably more appropriately) "flood, Stream, torrent". The modern use derives from an account in the Hebrew Bible, in which pronunciation of this word was used to distinguish Tribe of Ephraim, Ephraimites, whose dialect used a differently sounding first consonant. The difference concerns the Hebrew letter ''Shin (letter), shin'', which is now pronounced as (as in ''voic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Split Infinitive
A split infinitive is a grammatical construction in which an adverb or adverbial phrase separates the "to" and " infinitive" constituents of what was traditionally called the full infinitive, but is more commonly known in modern linguistics as the to-infinitive (e.g. ''to go''). In the history of English language aesthetics, the split infinitive was often deprecated, despite its prevalence in colloquial speech. The opening sequence of the ''Star Trek'' television series contains a well-known example, " to ''boldly'' go where no man has gone before", wherein the adverb ''boldly'' was said to split the full infinitive, ''to go''. Multiple words may split a to-infinitive, such as: "The population is expected to ''more than'' double in the next ten years." In the 19th century, some linguistic prescriptivists sought to introduce a rule proscribing the split infinitive, and the resulting conflict had considerable cultural importance. The construction still renders disagreement, but m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Infinitives
Infinitive (abbreviated ) is a linguistics term for certain verb forms existing in many languages, most often used as non-finite verbs. As with many linguistic concepts, there is not a single definition applicable to all languages. The word is derived from Late Latin '' odusinfinitivus'', a derivative of ''infinitus'' meaning "unlimited". In traditional descriptions of English, the infinitive is the basic dictionary form of a verb when used non-finitely, with or without the particle ''to''. Thus ''to go'' is an infinitive, as is ''go'' in a sentence like "I must go there" (but not in "I go there", where it is a finite verb). The form without ''to'' is called the bare infinitive, and the form with ''to'' is called the full infinitive or to-infinitive. In many other languages the infinitive is a distinct single word, often with a characteristic inflective ending, like ''morir'' (" odie") in Spanish, ''manger'' (" oeat") in French, ''portare'' (" ocarry") in Latin and Italian, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
