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Wait? Isn’t this a site for editing and copywriting services? Why are you talking about gardening?   Ah, well, it’s just that time of year… No, seriously, it’s a metaphor.   In south-west Ontario, if you want to enjoy a beautiful garden for the whole of our – shortish – summer, then May/June,  is prime gardening time. A great deal of effort and hard work is required: digging, adding compost, planting, watering, weeding, etc., during the late spring – the reward is a garden that’s flourishing and that will continue to delight, with comparatively minimal maintenance required, for the rest of the season.     Sound familiar? If you’re starting any new enterprise, a considerable amount of effort is required at the plannin ...

  Unlike many European languages, the subjunctive mood is relatively rare in English. Nonetheless, if you’re wanting your written English to be flawless, it’s definitely worth understanding the appropriate use of the subjunctive.       Consider the following:   If I were you, I wouldn’t lend him money.   If your brother were here, he would back me up.   In the case of the first and third person singular, together with the past tense of the verb to be, the subjunctive mood is used – so the sentences above are correct. The reason is that in both cases the conditional is unlikely or impossible – I am not you and never could be; your brother is clearly not here. In these situations were is used in place of was.   As is often the case with popular culture, Californ ...

As we wrote last month, change is constant. Not only vocabulary, but grammar and punctuation also change, albeit quite slowly.   Part 2: Grammar Changes in grammar “rules” evolve fairly slowly over time. How much grammar use has changed since you learned the basics at school will largely depend on how old you are. In fact, it likely depends how old you are as to whether you were even taught the basic grammar rules at school at all! A whole generation seems to have fallen through the cracks during a widespread trend in the 70s and 80s to omit any formal teaching of grammar, due to the belief that focusing on correct grammar would destroy children’s creativity and willingness to write. Despite this, most reasonably educated people of that generation still speak and wri ...