Everyday English for Grown-ups

Here are some examples (well there’s one already):

Stationery/Stationary Paper and envelopes/Remain still

Both a and the can occasionally be lengthened (to ay and thee) for the purposes of emphasis. ‘No, not your car – ay car’; ‘It is thee finest wine.’

There are over one hundred prepositions in English

Complex Sentences
These, you will not be surprised to learn, are more complicated than simple sentences. They contain additional information in the form of subordinate clauses. If we take our first sentence about Granny and add a conjunction (or joining word) to it, we see that it becomes incomplete:
Although Granny put the Christmas present on the table …
It has moved from a simple sentence to an unfinished fragment and needs further information to make it complete. Let’s add some more details and have another look:
Although Granny put the Christmas present on the table, she had forgotten to wrap it.
That now makes sense as a complete, complex sentence. Our initial sentence (‘Granny put the present on the table’) has become a subordinate clause and our additional information a main clause. The two are joined together by the conjunction although.
Subordinating conjunctions join subordinate clauses to main clauses. Examples include unless, since, whereas, while, if and after.
Compound Sentences
Complex sentences, as we have seen, contain a subordinating (or dependent) clause that will not stand up on its own, and a main (or independent) clause that will. In compound sentences, however, we have clauses of equal weight, all of them independent (that is to say making sense on their own), joined by a conjunction, usually and, but or or. An example of this is:
I’ll take the high road, but you’ll take the low road.
Because the two parts are independent, this could just as well be written in two complete simple sentences:
I’ll take the high road. You’ll take the low road.

sentence so that the object (me) takes a preposition such as to, by, with or from, for example, it is an indirect object.

is possible to re-phrase the original sen

The indicative mood is used in statements of fact: ‘It is raining today’; ‘My new car is blue.’
When we ask questions the mood is interrogative and the subject follows the auxiliary verb (‘has’): ‘Has the baker sold out of bread?’
The imperative mood is used for commands: ‘Go and get your bag’; ‘Shut the door.’
The subjunctive is used for expressing hypothetical or unreal statements, wishes, suggesting, hopes, emphasizing urgency. Most of the time it goes unnoticed as only the verb ‘to be’ and the present tense third person singular (he/she/ it) change, the former taking the forms be or were, and the latter losing the final s or es.
‘I wish I had more time to paint’; ‘I wish I were able to draw like that’; ‘If she were less rude she would have more friends’; ‘I suggest that he come at the weekend’; ‘It is vital that you be at that meeting.’

intransitive – that is to say, it does not require an object in order to make sense – the subject-verb format creates a com

But it is sometimes used in place of the word to in an infinitive, as in ‘We should go and buy a new alarm clock.’ This should be ‘We should go to buy a new alarm clock.’
Why one simple word has been replaced by another is uncertain – perhaps because it was felt that the two verbs (in this case go and buy) had to be joined by a conjunction. It is a construction that is common in colloquial speech but should be avoided in formal writing.