Have you ever considered skipping a meal? Perhaps you have - for health reasons or otherwise. How about switching meals? Is it even possible to do so? As far as I was concerned, there were three main meals in the day: breakfast, lunch and dinner. Breakfast came as the first meal in the morning - and the name is also logical as you break your nightly fast (= a time period spent without

The title and other headings of a document are generally expected to stand out. So, among other things, people like to use some capital letters in them. But which letters do you put in upper case, and which not? There seem to be several styles in this regard. Sometimes you find that all the letters of a title are capitalized. THE RISE AND FALL OF SOCIALISM In other cases, only the initial

When it comes to conditional sentences dealing with the past, we're used to seeing the so-called Third Conditional pattern very often. If you had heard his remark, you would have felt embarrassed.  It's about a remark that you didn't hear and, therefore, it's clear that you didn't feel embarrassed either. The condition (which is in the if-clause) didn't happen, so the possible result

Conventional wisdom has it that the preposition 'between' is used when talking about a relationship involving two things or people; and 'among' when more than two are involved. Although some people try to follow this advice all the time, general usage doesn't always obey this rule. The idiomatic expression 'Between you, me and the gatepost' (meaning that something is meant to be strictly

Some time back I wrote a post entitled 'If I Were You...', which mainly addressed the issue of mixed conditionals. As mentioned in that post, these sentence structures come into use when the condition you're talking about belongs in a different time slot than the possible outcome. Though these patterns should come naturally to native speakers, the combinations might seem counter-intuitive to

The word 'agree' has several uses in English. One of the most common among them is to indicate that one person has the same opinion about something as someone else, or thinks what the other person suggests is a good idea.  I agree with him about/on the current situation. (I have the same opinion about the current situation as he does.) I agree with his analysis of the current situation

The colour green is generally associated with nature today. To go green is to take environment-friendly measures; any move or movement that's called green is likely to be concerned with the protection of our surroundings. green policies - policies favouring environmental conservation  going green - taking measures to protect nature It's used, by association, to convey other ideas

The English conjunctions of the type 'no matter what/how/who...' are often used the same way as 'whatever/however/whoever...'. No matter what you do, I'll be with you. / Whatever you do, I'll be with you. You have to do it no matter how hard it is. / You have to do it however hard it is. No matter who opposes the plan, the boss will go ahead with it. / Whoever opposes the plan, the

<!--[if gte mso 9]> 16.00 <![endif]--> Some confusion exists over whether to use the nominative or accusative case of pronouns (e.g. I or me, he or him...) after ‘than’ in English. Although the nominative case is the strictly grammatical option when the comparison is with the subject of the sentence, modern everyday usage often goes against it. He's

The two English words 'alternate' and 'alternative' seem to be a bit confusing to many people. The noun 'alternative' simply means 'something that can be done/used instead of something else' and nobody replaces it with 'alternate'. When it comes to the adjective in the same sense, though, some people - especially those who use American English - consider both as equivalents. Do we have

In many languages in the world, inanimate things are sometimes assigned feminine gender in a figurative way to highlight their gentle or generous qualities. The moon cast her gentle light on the fields. We sometimes marvel at nature and her abundance. However, there are some languages that always view such things as either masculine or feminine. For example, the French language

The word 'must' is a very common one in the English language. One of its uses is to say that it's necessary for someone to do something. I must leave now, otherwise I'll be late for work.  You must work harder. The expressions 'have to' and 'have got to' are also taken to convey a similar meaning.  We have to be there by 8 o'clock. They've got to reduce their spending. Some

There are expressions in English that contain the phrases 'in case' and 'in case of'. Though related, these two are used in somewhat different ways. Let's consider 'in case of' first. In case of fire, everyone should use the staircase. Call me in case of any emergency.   They're going to complain to the boss in case of the slightest disturbance.  This type of sentence generally  

The adjective 'different' is found in general usage followed by three prepositions: 'from', 'to' and 'than'. But can you use any one of them freely; are they just interchangeable? Not quite. There are several things you have to take into consideration in this regard: 1. 'Different from' is the most accepted and most widespread form in both British and American English, especially in

We may have a lot of ideas of our own to write about. These could be interesting to other people too. But it's a rare man (or woman) who doesn't ever need to quote something someone else has said; and sometimes it has to be quoted in their own words too. Enter quotation marks. My brother said, "I want something to eat." She asked, "Where's the bus stop?" Some people prefer to use double