When someone uses “long term” or “long-term” while speaking, the words sound the same. Still, you’re confident you’ve seen this expression written both with and without the hyphen, so it’s not unusual to wonder, “Is it ‘long-term’ or ‘long term’?” And does that make a difference to the meaning of the word? Both “long-term” and …
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Have you ever been tempted to use the phrase “accompanied by” or “accompanied with” but were concerned about using it in the wrong context? Worry no more! In this article, we’ll take a closer look at the meanings of these phrases, particularly how they’re different from each other. “Accompanied by” is a phrase we predominantly …
The use of “has” or “have” is one of those verbal conjugations that can confuse English speakers. There are up to a dozen “rules” surrounding their use, but before we start to panic, let’s reduce the rules to their simplest form, using one example: do we use “the country has” or “the country have”? “The …
When it comes to versatile words, “had” is probably one of the first to come to mind. Unfortunately, useful words can get repetitive, and repetition often looks clumsy in English, so how do you avoid using “had”? When “had’ is a transitive verb, you can easily replace it with a synonym for ownership. However, when …
Unfortunately, there’s no way around it: the intricate rules of subject-verb agreement can be difficult. Whether you are a native speaker or someone learning English as a second language, subject-verb agreement is likely an area in which you may face some challenges. For example, words like “all” often leave people asking: should I say “all …
Depending on the type of writing you are doing, it may or may not be appropriate to use “and” to begin a sentence. Appropriateness often depends on the genre since fiction writing and business correspondence will have different rules and the sentence prior. Still, how do you avoid starting a sentence with “and”? It is …