Basic English Grammar Rules

Category: Academics

Since school days, students always find their English language teacher laying key emphasis on grammar and spellings. The simple reason is to polish their grammar skills and build in confidence so that they can communicate well in English, which is a global language that is widely spoken and is the most taught foreign language. English is also considered the official language in all fields, be it art, engineering or research. Most of the research work is published in English language. Writing and publishing their research in English is one of the major obstacle faced by researchers who are non-native speakers. To overcome this hindrance, these non-native speakers are taking help from companies that provide English Editing and Proofreading services. Grammar has hundreds of rules, but there are basic rules that one should be aware of. Simple Sentence Construction Rules: A sentence should express a thought completely. Such a sentence is also called an Independent clause. If a sentence fails to express a thought completely, then it is called a dependent clause. Clauses have both a subject and a predicate. A singular subject needs a singular predicate. When a group of words lacks a subject and predicate, then it is a phrase. Knowing Subject and Predicate: A sentence consists of a subject and a predicate. The subject is the star of a sentence. Example: Person/animal/thing. The predicate states the action of the subject is performing or describes the subject. Punctuation Usage: A sentence should begin with a capital/upper case letter. Title for any subject should be capitalized. A punctuation mark should be placed at the end of every sentence. Period, question mark, exclamation mark are all punctuation marks. When you need to separate a sentence from the list of items and when the second sentence explains the first, then a colon is used. Wherever there is a pause in a sentence, a comma is used to indicate that pause. A comma is used to separate two things, for example, when separating a town from a state, a comma is used. An apostrophe is used for showing possession. If the noun is singular, an apostrophe and “s” are added and when the noun is plural, an apostrophe alone is added. The abovementioned rules are for beginners and will help them lay a strong foundation about basic English grammar. However, those who are willing to learn English editing and Proofreading need to know more about English grammar and usage, at the advance level.