bitch please

The Present Progressive Tense

Talking about dynamic ongoing activities happening at a specific present time only

The Present Progressive tense (or Present Continuous) is a much-used verb tense in English that describes on-going actions at the moment of speaking, stressing that the doer is in the middle of the activity and hasn’t finished yet (the action is incomplete). It is used to refer to a temporary dynamic activity occurring at a specific time in the present, not on a regular basis. To know more, read these sections of our grammar review on the Present Progressive in English.

1. Slogan
2. Usages
3. Form
4. Common time expressions
5. Negative statements and questions types
6. Summary

1. Slogan: “I am in the middle of doing something, please don’t disturb !” or

“It doesn’t happen all the time”

The slogans encapsulate the basic meaning of the Present Progressive, so use it when hesitating about what verb form to choose in your English writing. Remembering one short slogan can help you navigate through all the grammar rules it relates to.

Creative English Writing

Welcome to the Free English Writing Guide. The Free English Writing Guide provides articles that offer tips and suggestions on how to write successfully. How to write business letters, cover letters and reports or produce creative English writing of a high standard in essays, articles and novels. 

Writing is a complex skill that requires time to develop as many elements are weaved together to form one final product. Writing is more than just putting words and sentences together, as it should also address questions of writing purpose (to convince, inform or narrate), audience (friends Vs. business associates, teenagers Vs. University professors), genre (argumentative, descriptive, narrative), style (avoiding sexist and biased language, conciseness, and emphasis), register (formal. Informal, technical, jocular) and format (article, report, contract, letter, e-mail, memo etc.). To achieve a good piece of writing, there are some essential and well defined stages within the writing process that make sure you will actually end up with the piece of writing you intended to have.

 

Different writing purposes frequently warrant the usage of specific formats, which by convention are expected to be used, using specific headings, graphic layout and specialist terminology. As nearly all writers in all levels, find it sometimes hard to start writing what they have in mind, a good writing template with a ready-made structure, key words and phrases can serve as an excellent springboard. For example, when writing informative texts in expository style for school or for journalistic purposes, it is recommended to use an agreed upon structure for a review article, a student's 5-paragraph essay on Napoleon or a news item. Persuasive writing is based on a strong persuasive style, which empowers opinion essays, newspaper editorials or business proposals. Academic writing, for college or university, expects certain models for writing assignments, from a research report or a book review; through to a lab report, literary analysis, or a term paper; and all the way up to a full thesis.

The world of business writing uses common formats for business e-mails, press releases, financial plans or even simple memos confirming a business meeting. Resumes stand in a category of their own, as various occupations merit various resume styles. Legal documents, such as real estate contracts, power to an attorney or wills, or medical documents such as insurance policies and autopsy reports require careful attention to technicalities. Various letter formats are very useful for letters of resignation, complaint or recommendation.

In contrast to the hard factual approach taken in expository writing, Creative writing lets you give vent to personal thought, subjective feelings and practically anything that comes to mind without having to provide evidence to support arguments. Such writing includes diary entries, personal blogs, love letters and just about any kind of free written reflection. Finally, literary writing, attempted by layman and artist alike, produces narratives for short stories or novellas, lyrical poems and sonnets, and dramatic prose for plays or movie scripts.

English Vocabulary: Beginnings

There Just Seems to Be No End to It - Part 1

The English language has become the international language of the world. In addition to the 400 million people speaking English as a first language, about 800 million use or study Englishas a second/ foreign language. As English grammar is relatively simple compared to other languages, it is the vast English vocabulary, which poses a real challenge in the quest to master the language.

Almost every word in English seems to have many synonym sets with rough to subtle differences in meaning between members of each set. For example, to name the place where one lives, you can use home, house, quarters, or lodging (standard); residence, domicile, orhabituation (formal); and shack, digs, spot, or pad (informal, slang). A set of words can also be found to describe a person who talks a lot: articulate, eloquent, fluent (positive connotation); vocal, talkative, verbose (neutral connotation); chattering, gossipy, and gabby(negative connotation). There just seems to be no end to English words...

The most complete dictionary of English, the Oxford English Dictionary, or OED (second edition, 20 volumes, 1989) has more than 600,000 word entries (including archaic forms and variant spellings). Nevertheless, English is estimated to have more than a 1,000,000 words, as the second half of the 20th century enriched the language with an abundance of specialist, technical and scientific terms, not to mention slang and contributions from local English varieties (American, British, Australian & New-Zealander English, Indian English, and more). Just for comparison, Arabic has "only" 200,000 words, German 160,000, French 140,000, Japanese 116,000, and Hebrew 100,000 (rough estimates).

How is it that English has such a huge vocabulary, larger than any other language on earth? In addition to various word formation mechanisms existing in other languages, such as onomatopoeia, derivation, affixation, compounding and functional extension, the major source for the large variety of English words is its dramatic history. The 1,600 years of English existence have been witness to massive revolutionary changes in the language as it mixed with and continuously borrowed from other languages, with which it came into contact.

Early English roots trace back to the invasion of the Anglo-Saxons to Britain in the 5th and 6th centuries resulting in Old English being mainly Germanic. 83% of the most common 1000 words in today's English are of Anglo-Saxon origin.

Old English words

nouns: house, mother, father ,cow, God, gold, work, land, winter verbs: be, have, do, say, come, make adjectives: good, new, and long function words: he, of, him, for, and, under, on

Already in this period of Old English, the language began applying its inclination to ravenously borrow words from other languages. From the native Celts, it took clan, bin, gull, and crag, as well as names for places and rivers ( Dover, Kent, Severn, Thames). Latin words arrived even earlier with the Roman conquest of 43 B.C. ( cheese, cup, kitchen, plant, street, wine). A later wave of Latin words was brought with Christian monks and missionaries seeking to convert the Anglo-Saxons, enriching the language with both religious and secular words, such asabbot, altar, acolyte, candle, martyr, Mass, and lily.

The next addition to the vocabulary to close the Old English period resulted from the Viking invasions to Britain during the 8th and 9th centuries. These newcomers, who had settled alongside the Anglo-Saxons, contributed Old Norse vocabulary such as the following:

from Old Norse

flat, cake, take, get, call, husband, want, cut, both, ugly, fellow, hit, odd, egg, sister, law, leg, rag, window, die, are (form of the verb be) words beginning with sk: scorch, scrape, scrub, skill, and sky The personal pronouns: they, their, them

Synonymous word sets such as those presented above already show up in this period: sick vs.ill, shirt vs. skirt, wrath vs. anger, rear vs. raise, hide vs. skin, the first Anglo-Saxon, the second Old Norse, respectively. The all-in-all contribution of words from Germanic origins (Anglo-Saxon, Old Norse etc.) amounts to about 23% of the current English vocabulary.

The year 1066 marked the dramatic transition to Middle English, with William the Conqueror, king of Normandy in Western France, drawing his army into Britain. Old French thus became the spoken language of the ruling classes: the nobles, bankers, lawmakers, and scholars; the peasants and lower classes spoke Anglo-Saxon and some surviving Celtic dialects; the clergy used Latin. In the coming 400 years, Middle English gradually overthrew French and became the language of all classes, but words for government, religion, food, law, art, literature, and medicine are originally French.

from Norman French

parliament, justice, crime, marriage, money, ornament, art, pleasure, joy, rent

The parallel usage of several languages has resulted in some famous duplicate and triplicate synonym sets. For instance, kingly (from Old English), royal (from French), and regal (from Latin). As well as house-mansion, wood-forest, answer-reply, yearly-annual, room-chamber, wish-desire, might-power, worthy-honorable, and bold-courageous (the former from Old-English, the latter from French, respectively).

Another fascinating example of the social divide between language users of Middle English is shown in nouns denoting different kinds of meats. The English speaking peasants who raised the animals used the Anglo-Saxon words ( swine/pig, sheep, ox, cow, calf, deer), whereas the French speaking elite, who could afford eating these meats regularly, used the French equivalents ( pork, bacon, mutton, beef, veal, venison, respectively). Today, these duplicates remain in common use in modern English, using different words for the animals and the meats produced from them. The contribution of both Norman and Modern French to English is estimated in about 29% of the current vocabulary.

English Vocabulary Guide - Vocabulary Check / Vocabulary Checker

English Vocabulary Guide - Vocabulary Check / Vocabulary Checker

Welcome to the English Vocabulary Guide. The English Vocabulary Guide has articles about key topics on English vocabulary and semantics (the meaning of words) that will teach you about writing more correctly. Remember that even experienced writers always have their writing edited for vocabulary (word replacement with synonyms, enrichment, register, collocations or word appropriateness).

As English has the largest vocabulary compared to other languages, with estimates running between 500,000 and one million word items, it is important to know how to enrich your vocabulary. Words together form phrases, figures of speech and idioms which enrich one's language figuratively and symbolically. In addition to tips on memorizing words, our vocabulary guide allows you to access information on word formation and derivation (roots, prefixes and suffixes), phrasal verbs, synonyms, antonyms, word origins in English, dictionary use, cliches, jargon, and words commonly confused.

The Past Simple Tense

Talking about finished actions, facts, and habits in the past

The Past Simple tense (or Simple Past), sometimes called the preterit in English grammar, is a highly used verb tense for referring to finished past activities. At its core, the Past Simple is used to refer to isolated actions that started and were completed at a well-defined time in the past. To know more, read these sections of our review on the Past Simple in English.

1. Slogan
2. Usages
3. Form
4. Common time expressions
5. Negative sentences and question types
6. Summary

 

1. Slogan: “It happened, I know when, and that’s it !”

The slogan encapsulates the basic meaning of the Past Simple, so use it when hesitating about what verb form to choose in your English writing. Remembering one short slogan can help you navigate through all the grammar rules it relates to.

Top ten grammar Peeves

10) Irregardless is not a word

9) An apostrophe is never used to form a plural

8 ) “Literally” means it actually happened. Not that it figuratively happened.

7) Loose and Lose are two different words

6) Your and You’re are two different words

5) Their, They’re, and Their are actually three different words

4) Nonplus does not mean what you think it means.

3) Affect is a verb. Effect is a noun

2) It’s “I couldn’t care less.” “I could care less” actually means you care

1) “It’s” is short for “it is” and “its” means “belonging to it”

Ladies and gentlemen, an example of the seniors that attend my high school.

Ladies and gentlemen,
an example of the seniors that attend my high school.

11 Rules of Writing, Grammar, and Punctuation

1. To join two independent clauses, use a comma followed by a conjunction, a semicolon alone, or a semicolon followed by a sentence modifier.

2. Use commas to bracket nonrestrictive phrases, which are not essential to the sentence's meaning.

3. Do not use commas to bracket phrases that are essential to a sentence's meaning.

4. When beginning a sentence with an introductory phrase or an introductory (dependent) clause, include a comma.

5. To indicate possession, end a singular noun with an apostrophe followed by an "s". Otherwise, the noun's form seems plural.

6. Use proper punctuation to integrate a quotation into a sentence. If the introductory material is an independent clause, add the quotation after a colon. If the introductory material ends in "thinks," "saying," or some other verb indicating expression, use a comma.

7. Make the subject and verb agree with each other, not with a word that comes between them.

8. Be sure that a pronoun, a participial phrase, or an appositive refers clearly to the proper subject.

9. Use parallel construction to make a strong point and create a smooth flow.

10. Use the active voice unless you specifically need to use the passive.

11. Omit unnecessary words.

Commonly Misspelled Words

Week #1
1. innocuous 2. shriek 3. yield 4. disappear 5. seizure 6. conceited 7. revise 8. accidental	9. caffeine 10. exercise 11. reign 12. weird 13. equipped 14. suddenness 15. misstate 16. worshiper	17. referred 18. advertise 19. quizzed 20. retained 21. annulled 22. misspelling 23. coolly 24. receive 25. shield
Week #2
1. deficient 2. prohibited 3. criticize 4. acquitted 5. referred 6. sincerely 7. bookkeeper 8. newsstand	9. vacillate 10. villain 11. unskillful 12. parallel 13. all right 14. leisure 15. forfeit 16. sieve	17. collaborate 18. mischievous 19. omniscient 20. hierarchy 2l. mischief 22. surprise 23. sovereign 24. perceive 25. feign
Week #3
1. inflexible 2. satellite 3. appearance 4. parallel 5. accelerate 6. occurrence 7. supersede 8. manageable	9. dissimilar 10. relevance 11. traceable 12. antecedent 13. enforceable 14. judgment 15. preference 16. abundance	17. rarefy 18. anoint 19. battalion 20. assess 21. grievous 22. innuendo 23. valuable 24. specify 25. eligible
Week #4
1. passable 2. admirable 3. forfeit 4. decisively 5. arguable 6. commitment 7. preferred 8. argument	9. consensus 10. sustenance 11. occasional 12. energy 13. quotient 14. gullible 15. discernible 16. desirable	17. sufficient 18. movable 19. irresistible 20. livable 2l. embarrassed 22. demagogue 33. deterrence 24. sheriff 25. miscellaneous
Week #5
1. privilege 2. exhilarate 3. colossal 4. numskull 5. superintendent 6. merchandise 7. khaki 8. sacrilegious	9. trespass 10. resuscitate 11. absence 12. allege 13. supersede 14. concede 15. conscience 16. disagree	17. insistence 18. rhythm 19. minimize 20. occurrence 2l. adolescent 22. abscess 23. pastime 24. analyze 25. precede
Week #6
1. synagogue 2. repetition 3. hypocrisy 4. sensitive. 5. obsession 6. arrival 7. harass 8. proceed	9. ecstasy 10. relief 11. compelled 12. forty 13. tobacco 14. threshold 15. ancient 16. separate	17. committee 18. presumptuous 19. agreeable 20. exceed 2l. disheveled 22. heresy 23. concurred 24. tariff 25. accommodate
Week #7
1. complement 2. counterfeit 3. dilemma 4. broccoli 5. corroborate 6. negligible 7. financier 8. conscientious	9. contemptible 10. bachelor 11. appalling 12. necessary 13. obscene 14. excise 15. loneliness 16. usable	17. governor 18. foreign 19. susceptible 20. fierce 21. indispensable 22. vacancy 31. succumb 24. copyright 25. secession
Week #8
1. suppress 2. irascible 3. wield 4. stationery 5. believe6. besiege 7. orator 8. anonymous	9. adamant 10. wholly 11. hemorrhage 12. withhold 13. profited 14. oppressive 15. plausible 16. thoroughly	17. facetious 18. repressible 19. maneuver 20. brief 21. skepticism 22. dumbfound 23. sergeant 24. omitted 25. occurred

ADVERBS: How adverbs are formed

Rules

1. In most cases, an adverb is formed by adding '-ly' to an adjective:

Adjective	Adverb
cheap quick slow	cheaply quickly slowly

Examples:

• Time goes quickly.


• He walked slowly to the door.


• She certainly had an interesting life.


• He carefully picked up the sleeping child.

Rules

If the adjective ends in '-y', replace the 'y' with 'i' and add '-ly':

Adjective	Adverb
easy angry happy lucky	easily angrily happily luckily

If the adjective ends in -'able', '-ible', or '-le', replace the '-e' with '-y':

Adjective	Adverb
probable terrible gentle	probably terribly gently

If the adjective ends in '-ic', add '-ally':

Adjective	Adverb
basic economic tragic	basically economically tragically

Note: Exception: public - publicly

2. Some adverbs have the same form as the adjective:

Adjective and Adverb
early fast hard high	late near straight wrong

Compare:

• It is a fast car.


• He drives very fast.


• This is a hard exercise.


• He works hard.


• We saw many high buildings.


• The bird flew high in the sky.

3. 'Well' and 'good'

'Well' is the adverb that corresponds to the adjective 'good'.

Examples:

• He is a good student.


• He studies well.


• She is a good pianist.


• She plays the piano well.
  


• They are good swimmers.


• They swim well.