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The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation

Category: Verbs

Irregular Verbs

Posted on Friday, July 18, 2008, at 6:25 pm

A verb is called a regular verb if its past tense and past participle are formed by adding -ed (waited, insisted) or sometimes just -d (breathed, replaced). Verbs in English are irregular if they don't have a conventional -ed ending in the past tense. Example: Go (present tense), went (past tense), gone (past participle) Note: …

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When to Add s to a Verb

Posted on Saturday, April 14, 2007, at 8:44 pm

Our review of English verbs has included discussion of when to add es to a verb. You might also wonder when to add s to the end of a verb. With verbs, only those with a third-person singular noun or pronoun (he, she, boat, courage) as a subject add an s to the end. Verbs with plural nouns and …

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You Could Look It Up

Posted on Friday, March 30, 2007, at 2:06 pm

I hope you enjoy this. Thanks to Peter H. for sending it. There is a two-letter word that perhaps has more meanings than any other two-letter word, and that word is up. It's easy to understand up, meaning toward the sky or at the top of the list, but when we awaken in the morning, …

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What Is a Gerund and Why Care?

Posted on Tuesday, February 13, 2007, at 6:00 pm

What is a gerund and why do you need to know? Maybe it would be better to answer the second part of the question first so that you have some motivation to identify gerunds. If you are able to pick the gerund(s) out in your sentence, you will avoid a grammar gaffe that often goes …

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Affect vs. Effect: Should I Use Affect or Effect?

Posted on Wednesday, January 10, 2007, at 3:57 pm

Affect and effect are similar words with comparable meanings and pronunciations, so it’s little wonder that so many speakers of American English confuse the two. Here we will provide a quick guide for using the two words correctly. Rule 1. Use the verb effect when you mean bring about or brought about, cause or caused. …

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