User:Freewayguy/Language coaching

July 31

Subject–verb agreement

All right, we'll start out with a quick look at subject–verb agreement. Every sentence has a subject and a verb. The subject is what the sentence is about, and the verb describes what the subject is doing. For example, in this sentence:

John edits Wikipedia every day.

John is the subject of the sentence, and edits is the verb. (In all the example sentences below, I have highlighted the subject in green and the verb in red so that you can find them easier.)

In English, the verb's form is changed to suit the subject. This is called subject–verb agreement. This only applies to verbs in the present tense, though, verbs in the past and future tenses usually are not affected. The basic rule is that a sentence has a singular subject, the verb will end in S, but when the sentence has a plural subject (plural means more than one: dog is singular, but dogs is plural), it will not have an S at the end. Take a look at the above sentence: John, the subject, is singular, so the verb has an S on the end of it. Let's look at a sentence that has a plural subject:

The boys edit Wikipedia every day.

As you can see, the "S" is dropped from "edit" (the verb) here. When sentences have a compound subject (two or more subjects with a conjunction like and or or between them), they are treated just the same as if they were a plural subject. For example:

Highway 5 and Highway 65 enter the town of Temple together.

As mentioned above, verbs in past tense are not normally affected by this:

ODOT closed SH-20 due to the landslide.

The workers closed the right lane so that the pothole could be fixed.

However, the common verb to be, which is very irregular, is affected by this:

I was on my way to work when I saw the accident.

Several cars were on the shoulder and in the ditch.

An ambulance was on the way.

Policemen were already on the scene, however.

In the past tense, use was with singular subjects and were with plural subjects.

Here's a few more examples, from some of our featured articles:

The Chickasaw Turnpike takes a southwest-to-northeast route, passing through only two counties, Murray and Pontotoc.
Just west of downtown, US 2/US 41 join M-35 at the intersection of Ludington Street and Lincoln Road.
- US 2 and US 41 are two different (concurrent) highways, so they act as a compound subject. You can treat the slash separating concurrent routes as if it were the word "and".
Construction of the highway was mostly raised on embankments.
Toll roads were gaining in popularity as ways of raising funds for new freeways.

Vocabulary

egregious (adj.)

Outrageously bad, intolerable.

The vandal made a number of egregious personal attacks on the administrator's talk page.

Questions

Post questions about the above here. —Scott5114 ↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 20:55, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Comment: I understood the singular and plural (s, es), and past tense i always forgot to add (d, ed). Do we have a spell check here like Microsoft Word does, where it underlines the mispell words in scarlet, and grammatically incorrect words or phrases in green? NE2 told me once to use spell check while providing edit summaries. Was is always singular, and were is always plural.--Freewayguy ^{Call? Fish} 21:28, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

I might have knew what does egregious meant earlier. You have use that word on my editor review last time, when I had a very deep civility problem. it means something totally unacceptable, and way out of the line.--Freewayguy ^{Call? Fish} 21:37, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes, you're right about the meaning of egregious. As for spell checkers, there isn't one on Wikipedia itself, but several Web browsers include them. I use Mozilla Firefox, which underlines spelling mistakes in red but doesn't have a grammar checker. It's available for free at [1]. You could also try using http://www.spellcheck.net .—Scott5114 ↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 22:12, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

August 2

Some common homophones

Homophones are sets of words which are pronounced the same yet have different spellings and completely different meanings. Homophones are prone to being confused with each other, even by native English speakers. However, with some effort, it's fairly simple to learn which word goes with what meaning.

it's–its

it's: This is a contraction of "it is".
its: This is a possessive adjective: it describes that something belongs to "it". Example: "The dog wagged its tail".

These homophones usually trip people up because words indicating possession often end in "'s" (e.g. Mary's). However, its lacks an apostrophe. The key to keeping these straight is to remember that it's means "it is", and when you don't mean to say "it is", use its.

to–two–too

to: This is a preposition. Example: "Bob threw the ball to Larry."
two: Means the number 2. Perhaps this image can provide an illustration to help mentally link two to the number.
too: Basically, means "also". Example: "I want to go to Chicago too." It is also used to mean "excessively" in phrases like "too cold", "too little" "That's Too Much!", etc.

Two should be the easiest to master: mentally replace the "two" with the digit "2" and you can easily spot when it is misused. To and too are a bit tricker, but the same technique can often be used; in your mind, replace too with "excessively" or "also", and see if either makes sense. If not, use to.

they're–their–there

they're: This is a contraction of "they are".
their: This is a possessive adjective. Example: "They took off their coats."
there: Means, roughly, "in that place". Example: "After I read about Breezewood, I knew I had to go there".

They're is relatively easy to remember because the apostrophe reminds you this is a contraction, and the apostrophe even marks the spot where the missing "A" would be.

Vocabulary

tendentious (adj)

Biased, slanted, or skewed.

The user was warned that their tendentious edits were in violation of WP:NPOV.

A vocabulary tip

If you find looking up words in a paper dictionary cumbersome, try using Wiktionary, an online dictionary which is also one of Wikipedia's sister projects. It's a good idea to look up unfamiliar words when you see them, so that you can learn their meanings and possibly use them yourself.

Book recommendation

I know you said you don't like studying from books, but perhaps you would find Write Better, Speak Better (©1972, 1977 by Reader's Digest Association) helpful. It isn't written like an English textbook; it's geared more towards toward people such as yourself who want to learn practical information about the English language. It's a pretty old book so you probably won't be able to buy a copy from a bookstore, but perhaps your library may have a copy.

Questions

Post questions about the above here. —Scott5114 ↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 09:22, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Comments

Pretty much I knwo the rules of to-two-and too. To is commonly used on mapquest pointing to the destination. For example mapquest writes directions like merge onto I-405 North towards Long Beach, or Merge onto SR-22 East towards Orange. Towards and To generally means the same thing. Two is always used for numbers, and too is used for extreme. For example Mars' atmosphere may be too thin for humans to breathe. Jupiter's gravity is too strong for people to bear, meaning Jupiter have excessive gravity, normal humans cannot stand its gravity.--Freewayguy ^{Call? Fish} 18:38, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

It's is contraction for it is and its often used for adjective. Its is used for person's thing basically. For example when black people gets old its skin color usually will not change.--Freewayguy ^{Call? Fish} 18:42, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Well, actually, in that case you'd use their. Its is for inanimate objects (that is, not people). —Scott5114 ↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 19:48, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Actually tendentious is first time I hear the word. For slant usually means not a true vandalism but going to the wrong direction, basically just violating the WP:MOS.--Freewayguy ^{Call? Fish} 18:49, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Tendentious wouldn't refer to vandalism or MOS violations, actually, but to POV pushing. —Scott5114 ↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 19:48, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

August 4

Uncountable nouns

Certain nouns in the English language are considered uncountable. This means you cannot use them with numbers or use their plural forms. One such uncountable noun is information—saying "informations", "many informations", "4 informations", and such is improper. (Same goes for the shortened form info, you can't say infos.) Instead we say things like he gave me the information, that information is classified, a lot of information, the document contains four pieces of information.

Uncountable nouns are also sometimes called mass nouns since they usually refer to a bulk amount of something which is difficult to measure, such as air or water. Another example is beef—ground beef usually comes in big packages all mashed together, with no convenient unit with which to measure amounts with. Beef is instead usually measured by weight (a quarter-pound of beef). Also, most nouns which refer to concepts (like happiness) are also uncountable.

List of uncountable nouns

Here is a list of some other common uncountable nouns. Note that some of these words are both nouns and adjectives or verbs; this list refers only to the noun form. For example fat is an uncountable noun (meaning, say, the fat that one would cut off of a steak) and also an adjective (the fat woman).

air
addition
agreement
alcohol
beef
cattle
cheese
cinnamon
competence
contempt
custard
disdain
elastic
fat
foil
fleece
gas, gasoline
graffiti
gold (referring to the element, not the color)
gravy
heat
ink
lead (like the stuff that comes in pencils)
lettuce
litter (referring to trash)
love
mail
meat
plywood
posterboard
right-of-way
silk
smoke
spam
starch
steel
sugar
tilt
tin
tolerance
tar
tea
traffic
vanilla
vinyl
wood
yarn

Vocabulary

magnanimous (adj.)

Noble, generous, understanding, or tolerant.

Questions

Post questions about the above here. —Scott5114 ↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 20:21, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Comments

Golds, and silvers as elements are non-countable nouns, seems as hydrogen, and methane, which Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus, and Neptune have as atmospheric layers. Since hydrogen, helium, or methane is a gas, we can't really count it. Countable nouns are examples of coke, cookie, lemonade. Those tems we can count it, as well as computers.--Freewayguy ^{Ask? +000s} 18:35, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

September 7

Avoid using color as a replacement for specifics

I've noticed you often use color as the sole means of identifying some things, for example referring to the speedy deletion template as "the pink tag". In most cases, native English speakers will instead use a specific name rather than simply calling it by its color. This is helpful because it makes it more clear which object you are referring to. There's dozens of websites with blue backgrounds, for instance.

Example: The yellow website shows Obama leading McCain by 77 votes.
Better: Electoral-vote.com shows Obama leading McCain by 77 votes.
Example: I just removed the pink tag from the article.
Better: I just removed a speedy deletion tag from the article.
Example: He followed green I-40 through Weatherford.
Better: He followed Business Loop I-40 through Weatherford.

One exception to this is the telephone directory book, which is commonly referred to as the Yellow Pages. "The Yellow Pages" is even the official title of one company's telephone directory. You may wish to capitalize Yellow Pages so as to make it clear you are referring to a specific publication, and not a set of web pages which happen to have yellow backgrounds.

Speeches

I know you don't enjoy reading books, but perhaps speeches might be more interesting to you. They're typically shorter and more vivid, so you may find they hold your interest better. I find that they quite often showcase some of the best usage of the English language. Here are four famous speeches from American history:

Abraham Lincoln – Gettysburg Address, November 19, 1863
Franklin D. Roosevelt – Franklin Roosevelt's First Inaugural Address, March 1933
John F. Kennedy – John Kennedy's Inaugural Address, January 20, 1961
Martin Luther King, Jr. – I Have A Dream, 1963

Comments

Post comments or questions here. —Scott5114 ↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 21:44, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

So instead for pink tag we can say spd tag or qd also means quick deeltion will be fine. For Greenloop 80 we can say BUS 80 BR 80 or BL 80 might be fine. For black people it's better to say African American saying black might offend people. Instead we can say Rosa Parks, Maya Angelou, and Zelma Henderson are African Americans.--57 Free ways 23:46, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

What is speeches for. I only look Martin Luther King and Malcom X died early due to assination. I do know Rosa Parks and Zelma Henderson from Brown Board vs. Kansas. They are all deceased. At school I enjoy talking about black peoples. Alot of girls think talking about black peoples, and fascination of human skin colors is inappropriate and quite offensive. One teacher taught me to say African American or African descent. Bibligraphy on African descents might interest me. You see alot of black peoples like Lucy Kibaki, Ngina Kenyatta pics I post link on my userpage?--57 Free ways 23:56, 16 September 2008 (UTC)