Saturday, August 28, 2010

How English makes do to evoke the sense of the past imperfect

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Unlike the so-called Romance languages, the English language doesn’t have a well-developed past imperfect tense. In fact, English doesn’t i...
Friday, August 20, 2010

Let’s come to grips with the proper use of “however” once and for all

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Who can say right now that he or she has totally mastered the usage of “however,” that slippery word that can’t seem to stay put in just one...
Saturday, August 14, 2010

Why we need to hyphenate certain compound modifiers

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If you regularly follow my weekly critiques of the English usage of the four major Philippine broadsheets, or read at least one of the broad...
Sunday, August 8, 2010

Sounding profound by quoting someone without attribution

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Almost a year ago, I wrote a column in The Manila Times about how some TV news anchors would routinely end their newscasts by reciting with...
Saturday, July 31, 2010

The need to avoid officious stock phrases when writing or speaking

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Let’s face it: Bureaucrats, lawyers, and not a few academicians use a lot of officious stock phrases in both their written and spoken commun...
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Saturday, July 24, 2010

How finite verbs differ from non-finite verbs

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I’m sure all of us here are familiar with the verbals . They are, of course, the infinitives , the gerunds , and the participles —once-upon ...
Saturday, July 17, 2010

Why is the sentence “It can be overcame” grammatically wrong?

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To the consternation of many nonnative English speakers, some English verbs like “hit,” “cut,” and “shot” don’t inflect or change at all whe...