SML English Grammar & Usage

List of Common Errors Following is the list of common errors that can be seen in "spotting the error" questions in competitive exams 1.  words beginning with ‘h’ like, honour, honest, heir etc. are considered to be silent. Hence the vowel following it takes ‘an’, instead of 'a' for the article. Hence, the correct usage is "an hour", "an heir", "an honour" etc. 2. In case of using prepositions , you need to keep in mind the following definitions - between (to be used for only two) 3.  Always check for subject-verb agreement - if a subject is singular, then its verb should also be singular. On similar grounds, if a subject is plural, then its verb should also be plural. Furthermore,  if you write in the present tense, both the noun and the verb take plural forms in opposite ways. For instance, the noun adds an "s" to its singular form, on the other hand, the verb removes the "s" from its singular fo...

Nominalization (Creating Nouns)   What is Nominalization? Nominalization refers to the creation of a noun from verbs or adjectives. Most of the time, nouns are created from other parts of speech through the use of suffixes. In other cases, the word remains the same but is simply used a different way; this is known as conversion or zero derivation. Suffixes Verbs Suffixes are certain groupings of letters that can be attached to the end of words to change their meaning. Most verbs and adjectives that become nouns are changed using suffixes. (Be aware, however, that the examples below only show some of the common ways of using suffixes to change verbs and adjectives to nouns; they are not all concrete rules, and the lists of possible suffixes are not exhaustive ones. The best way to learn the spellings of such nouns is by using a good dictionary, or by encountering them in everyday speech and writing.) Gerunds There are certain patterns that we follow to dec...