Ennoble your English

How to speak and write better english

After completing an editing project for some authors whose mother tongue is not English, I summarized their common errors. I believe these notes will help those in the GSF. English has abundant infuriating and illogical rules! Knowing them does simplify communication and we must keep our communication simple in our globalized world. Many anglophones, even professional speakers, make some of the mistakes I will explain (and for them I wrote Winners Speak Globish).  Bad English can be heard every day on the TV and radio, and I read these kind of errors frequently—even in the New York Times.

Confusion arising from double meanings.
Pretty, trigger, right, radar screen, geared…all have other meanings.
A pretty face or a pretty difficult task?
Furthermore, hard, right, tremendous, for example, are adjectives that can be used for good and bad events.  A tremendous hurricane; a tremendous opportunity? Be precise and choose a specific word.

Different from is used for contrast; than is used for comparison.

Avoid Negatives

Avoid negatives on principle. Instead, say what you want! The unconscious mind hears no negatives: (don’t imagine a slice of lemon in your mouth).

Don’t over do it!  This brief command makes the reader feel like a kid; use only if you qualify the imperative with an example… by doing xxx. Even then, I would prefer to say what I want, not what I do not want.

Save a word!
Shorten: Don’t forget your umbrella,  to Remember your umbrella!

Negative sentence construction: not only…but…It is stronger and simpler to say ….xxx…AND…yyy, especially when emphasizing positive attributes: not only did he win the CPAE but he was also elected to the Board could be rephrased as, “he won the CPAE and was also elected to the Board.

We are programmed to react (subconsciously, at least) when we hear not and but.

However, use the negative construction when you want to add emphasis to negative circumstances: Not only did he lose his job, but he became sick as well.

Polish Your Phrases

There is/are or this/that is are weak phrases, especially as openings for sentences. Make your point without preamble. If you do use this sentence construction, pay attention to agreement between the singular or plural. Unfortunately, it is a daily event to hear mistakes such as: There’s many dimensions….:when it should be There are many…

Avoid abbreviations and acronyms unless defined when first used. A non-anglophone, and anglophones outside our profession, may not know what PR means.

Dangling prepositions are frequent in English. Winston Churchill is famous for his humorous reconstruction: ...something up with which I will not put! He avoided ending with a preposition. However, no one speaks like that and it sounds pedantic. It is not always possible to work around a preposition at the end of a sentence, but we should try.

Personally, I prefer a construction such as with whom/which or to whom/which, and also to get rid of that, which is used ubiquitously and always erroneously for a person). Simplify a phrase such as the group that she is a member of…with the group she joined.

People that. Ouch! A person always takes who. Whom is the object: who gave the apples to whom? The correct use of who raises the interest level; reserve that for objects.

Please remember to say that’s he, never that’s him. Who did that to you? It was they.  I regret that you will hear that’s him, It was them, almost always, but frequency of use is not automatically correct use. Turning the sentence around can be a guide: did them do that to you, or did they? Also with “whom”: Whom gave it to you? sounds wrong and it is. Some people use whom incorrectly and it sounds pompous!

Next to…refers to location (i.e., adjacent), not to a subsequent event.

Pictures is a word in common use. I prefer to be specific. A picture can be a photo, sketch, oil painting, a lithograph, engraving, and so on.  On the internet we have photos, images, and graphics—use the appropriate term.

Digits: 50,000, with a comma rather than a space, is how we express numbers in English, not 50 000.

Commas and Punctuation

Apostrophe. Plural nouns do not require an apostrophe: Book’s for sale is wrong; the books’ jackets were all torn is correct.

Also take care with its and it’s: its is possessive (the book’s cover = its cover) whereas it’s is an abbreviation for it is. The same problem arises with your (possessive, as in your book and you’re = you are (as in you’re going to be sorry…)

I prefer the serial comma: eats, shoots, and leaves is different from (not different than!) eats, shoots and leaves! (I recommend the book of that name on the subject of punctuation).

Hi, X; Hallo, Y. Greetings always take a comma before someone’s name. The exception is Dear X.

I could continue!
Basically, absolutely, the “ness monsters”, at the end of the day,
“H” pronounced “haitch”, heighth (instead of height)—and more. Please visit ennobler.net for my “pet peeves”, and you can view Powerpointpresentations I have given on ENnobling Your English, and Globish, (including my most recent talk in Noordwijk).