A salutation is a greeting used in a letter or other text (email, SMS, etc…). Salutations can be formal or informal. The most common form of salutation in a letter is Dear followed by the recipient’s given name or titles. For each style of salutation there is an accompanying style […]
Continue ReadingOn Foot vs By Foot
Oh language! Do we want to go down the route of there being no rules, just a few nebulous suggestions which change over time? Are we like the freethinking parents at sports day who declare that every child wins because they are all special? Or are we on the side […]
Continue ReadingMake or Do a Presentation?
I was asked this question the other day by a learner of English; quite simply, do we MAKE or DO a presentation? If you go online there are different stories, but as usual I went along to Google n-grams and checked out what they had to say. It’s interesting. Prior […]
Continue ReadingGot vs Gotten in English
Got and Gotten are often considered to be synonyms in British English & American English. However, this is not so and there are a number of differences between their usage. In British English the past participle of the verb, to get, is got. I have got 3 parking tickets this […]
Continue ReadingFillers
In linguistics, a filler is a sound or word in speaking used by someone to show that they haven’t finished speaking yet but are either forming their thoughts into speech or mentally searching for the right word. Common fillers in English are: um – /um/ er – /ə/ However, we […]
Continue Reading