Dear Students,
English Section in the exam is a section where some students score very well but others even fail to clear cut-off. Learning Grammar is really essential to score good marks. But, what happens is that students from various boards where lesser attention is paid on English language fail to apply grammar during the examination even if they know the rules.
So, conclusion is that practicing in some interesting way so that the things remain intact in your mind is important. Keeping this in mind, we have launched this series of “ENglish – VinglisH”. We have done enough for some common mistakes which we do while speaking, writing and communicating in English. Now we will discuss about the use of some basic words in English.
This is the fifth post of ENglish – VinglisH. Hope you people like it.
So, lets start now!!
1) Misplaced Apostrophes
Apostrophes aren’t difficult to use once you know how, but putting them in the wrong place is one of the most common grammar mistakes in the English language. Many people use an apostrophe to form the plural of a word, particularly if the word in question ends in a vowel, which might make the word look strange with an S added to make it plural.
Rules:
Apostrophes indicate possession – something belonging to something or someone else.
(i) To indicate something belonging to one person, the apostrophe goes before the ‘s’. For instance, “The girl’s horse.”
(ii)To indicate something belonging to more than one person, put the apostrophe after the ‘s’. For example, “The girls’ horse.”
(iii)Apostrophes are also used to indicate a contracted word. For example, “don’t” uses an apostrophe to indicate that the word is missing the “o” from “do not”.
(iv)Apostrophes are never used to make a word plural, even when a word is in number form, as in a date.
How not to do it:
- The horse’s are in the field
- Pen’s for sale
- In the 1980’s
- Janes horse is over there
- The girls dresses are ready for them to collect
How to do it properly:
- The horses are in the field
- Pens for sale
- In the 1980s
- We didn’t want to do it
- Jane’s horse is over there
- The girls’ dresses are ready for them to collect
2) Your/ you’re
Rules:
“Your” indicates possession – something belonging to you.
“You’re” is short for “you are”.
How not to do it:
- Your beautiful
- Do you know when your coming over?
- Can I have one of you’re biscuits?
How to do it properly:
- You’re beautiful
- Do you know when you’re coming over?
- Can I have one of your biscuits?
3) Its/it’s
We said earlier that apostrophes should be used to indicate possession, but there is one exception to this rule, and that is the word “it”. Unsurprisingly, this exception gets lots of people confused.
Rules:
- “It’s” is only ever used when short for “it is”.
- “Its” indicates something belonging to something that isn’t masculine or feminine (like “his” and “hers”, but used when you’re not talking about a person).
- If it helps, remember that inanimate objects can’t really possess something in the way a human can.
How not to do it:
- Its snowing outside
- The sofa looks great with it’s new cover
How to do it properly:
- It’s snowing outside
- The sofa looks great with its new cover
