Everything English

Writing and Grammar Tips (beta)


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Category : Writing Tips

The First Sentence

When you write a paper, it is a good idea to start the paper with an interesting first sentence. What is a good way to do this? You could use a quotation from another source that relates to your topic (for example: if your paper is about candy, you could say, Hershey’s founder Milton S. Hershey once said, “One is only happy in proportion as he makes others feel happy”). You could also use a statistic provided by another source (for example: According to The Hershey Company, about 2 billion people eat candy daily). Finally, and this can be a little difficult to accomplish, you can start the paper with a personal story about yourself or about someone else (known as an “anecdote”)…of course, the story should relate to your topic! These are just three ways to catch your reader’s attention and strengthen your writing techniques. Good luck!

Writing a Resume

So you are applying for a job or submitting school applications and you want to include your resume. That is a great idea! But do you know what to put on your resume and what to avoid? First of all, make sure you include current contact information (your phone number, email address, etc.) in case they need to contact you. Also, you want to list your education (highest level of education as well as your current school) and employment history. If it is relevant, you can also list any academic, professional, or social clubs you belong to as well as any awards you have received for your work. What to avoid when you are making/designing your resume: you do not want a resume that is too long. As a basic rule, you should limit your resume to about 2 pages.  Many people make the mistake of listing every single job they have ever had, and this can make the resume very long.  You should mainly list jobs or experiences that relate to the job or position you are applying for. Basically, if you want a job in accounting, you don’t need to include your one summer of flipping burgers at McDonald’s!

Verb Tenses

Verb is one of the most important parts of a sentence. It conveys the action part of a sentence – come, go, sit, stand, dance, write, read, run, climb etc. Tense is the form with which the verb must be presented in a sentence.

Examples:

I go home.

I’m going home.

I have gone home.

I have been going home.

I went home.

I was going home.

I had gone home.

I had been going home.

I will go home.

I will be going.

I will have gone home.

I will have been going home.

Notice here that the word “go” is being used in 12 different forms in order to convey 12 different meanings. All of these 12 forms emerge from the three basic tenses of the verb “go”:

Go (present tense), went (past tense), and gone (past participle) or,

Go (simple tense), went (past tense), and will go (future tense)

Let’s take another set of examples and identify the 12 verb tenses accordingly:

She breaks her hand –Simple Present Tense

She is breaking her hand — Present Continuous Tense (suggests an ongoing action in the present tense)

She has broken her hand — Present Perfect Tense (suggests a completed action in the present tense)

She has been breaking her hand — Present Perfect Continuous (suggest an ongoing action to be completed in the present tense)

She broke her hand — Simple Past Tense

She was breaking her hand — Past Continuous Tense (suggests an ongoing action in the past tense)

She had broken her hand — Past Perfect Tense (suggests a completed action in the past tense)

She had been breaking her hand — Past Perfect Continuous Tense (suggests an ongoing action to be completed in the past tense)

She will break her hand — Simple Future Tense

She will be breaking her hand — Future Continuous Tense ((suggests an ongoing action in the future tense)

She will have broken her hand — Future Perfect Tense ((suggests a completed action in the future tense)

She will have been breaking her hand — Future Perfect Continuous Tense (suggests an ongoing action to be completed in the future tense).

Unless it is a grammar school, not many English speaking people bother about identification of tenses. Their usage comes naturally with the fluency of the language.