Writers Write is your one-stop resource for writers. Use these 45 ways to avoid using the word ‘very’ to improve your writing. Good writers avoid peppering their writing with qualifiers like ‘very’ and ‘really’. They are known as padding or filler words and generally add little to your writing. According to Collins Dictionary: ‘Padding is unnecessary words or information used to make a piece of writing or a speech longer.
Free Online Lessons in English Grammar, Vocabulary and Phrases
Select an exercise below to practise your grammar, vocabulary and use of phrases. They are organised into three levels: Elementary: suitable for students from levels A2 to B1 on the CEF (Common European Framework) Intermediate: suitable for students from B1 to B2 on the CEF Advanced: suitable for students from C1 and C2 on the CEF The exercises on these pages were all written by International House Bristol staff and you will not find the same exercises on any other site or in any coursebook.
Simple Past
Exercises on Simple Past The simple past expresses an action in the past taking place once, never, several times. It can also be used for actions taking place one after another or in the middle of another action.
elt-resourceful
A collection of lesson plans Over the last few months I have been writing lesson plans for the British Council Teaching English site. Here is a collection of links. All materials are free to use. Is Slavery a Thing of the Past?
Grammar Girl
Mignon Fogarty is the creator of Grammar Girl and the founder and managing director of Quick and Dirty Tips. A magazine writer, technical writer, and entrepreneur, she has served as a senior editor and producer at a number of health and science web sites. She has a B.A. in English from the University of Washington in Seattle and an M.S. in biology from Stanford University. Mignon believes that learning is fun, and the vast rules of grammar are wonderful fodder for lifelong study. She strives to be a friendly guide in the writing world. Her archenemy is the evil Grammar Maven, who inspires terror in the untrained and is neither friendly nor helpful.
English grammar resources
Do you have a question about the correct usage of the semi-colon or how to place relative adverbs in a sentence? If so, you've come to the right place! The edufind.com English grammar guide is a complete reference on the rules of English usage. Every grammatical rule is explained in clear, simple language with several examples and, when necessary, counter-examples. The grammatical rules covered by this guide are categorized by part of speech.
Replace the Word 'Very' with One of These 128 Modifiers
Do you remember high school English class very well? If so, you likely spotted the flaw in that sentence. If you didn't, here's a refresher: As our composition teachers told us long ago, the modifier "very" is lazy and inprecise—and some of America's most prominent writers can vouch for that assessment. Florence King, the sharp-tongued American novelist, essayist, and columnist, reportedly once wrote: "'Very' is the most useless word in the English language and can always come out. More than useless, it is treacherous because it invariably weakens what it is intended to strengthen." As for Mark Twain, he advised writers to writers to "Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very'; Your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be."
Verb-Adverb Charades
Subjects Arts & Humanities --Language Arts --Theater Arts Grade [facebookbadge] Brief Description Verbs and adverbs take center stage in this lively activity.
How To Use Delicious For My Business?
How to Use Delicious Delicious is a pretty new social media platform with a brand new way for people to share what they are surfing, particularly their bookmarks, which are the sites that they frequent the most, so before we go into how to use Delicious lets take a look at what it is exactly first. How to Use Delicious | What’s Its Purpose? Delicious describes itself as a Social Bookmarking service. We all love to bookmark our favorite sites, but we all know how difficult it is to manage all of our bookmarks, share them our friends, and we definitely can’t access them from different computers than our own. With Delicious we can do all of those things with one service.
Reported speech
We use reported speech when we want to tell someone what someone said. We usually use a reporting verb (e.g. say, tell, ask, etc.) and then change the tense of what was actually said in direct speech. So, direct speech is what someone actually says?
