Apology Email to Your Boss: Examples and What to Say
When you need to apologize to your boss, the email has two jobs. It should acknowledge what went wrong, but it should also give your manager enough information to understand…
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Apostrophe Rules: Possessives, Contractions, and Examples
Should you write the students’ projects or the student’s projects? Both forms are correct, but they don’t mean the same thing. The student’s project was selected for the exhibition. The…
Participial Adjectives: -ing and -ed Forms, Meaning, and Examples
A confusing instruction, a confused traveler, a broken railing, and boiling water all contain forms that come from verbs but work adjectivally. These are commonly called participial adjectives. Some appear…
Order of Adjectives in English: Rules, Examples, and OSASCOMP
A beautiful old Italian painting sounds natural. An Italian beautiful old painting does not. The adjectives are the same, but English normally places them in a particular sequence before a…
Compound Adjectives: Meaning, Types, and Hyphenation Rules
A five-hour delay, a thought-provoking question, and a user-friendly interface all use compound forms to describe a noun. Some compound adjectives are hyphenated. Others are written as one word or…
Colon vs. Semicolon: Differences, Rules, and Examples
A colon and a semicolon can both connect related information, but they don’t do exactly the same job. Consider: The ferry service was suspended: strong winds had made the crossing…
Limiting Adjectives: Meaning, Types, and Examples
Limiting adjectives are words that tell us which person or thing we mean, whose it is, or how many or how much there is. In traditional grammar, words such as…
Helping Verbs (Auxiliary Verbs) in English: Types and Examples
Helping verbs do much of the grammatical work inside English verb phrases. They help us form questions and negatives, build continuous, perfect, and passive constructions, and add meanings such as…
Quotation Marks in English: Rules and Examples
Quotation marks show when you’re using someone’s exact words rather than reporting what they said in your own words. They also appear around titles of shorter works and certain words…
Adjectives of Material: Meaning, Examples, and Usage
Adjectives of material describe what something is made of, as in a wooden chair or a woollen coat. English also uses material nouns such as cotton, leather, and steel before…
Adjectives of Origin: Meaning, Examples, and Usage
A Japanese novel, a Brazilian architect, and a Sicilian recipe all use adjectives that connect a noun with a place, region, or culture. These forms can show where something is…
Predicate Nominative in English Grammar: Definition and Examples
A predicate nominative is a noun, pronoun, or noun phrase that follows a linking verb and identifies or classifies the subject. It is also called a predicate noun. Consider: The…