Prefixes and Suffixes | The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation

What Is An Affix?

GrammarBook.com — Wed, 24 May 2023 11:00:07 +0000

Many of us have heard of prefixes and suffixes along the way in learning English grammar. Prefixes and suffixes both belong to a larger category, the affix. An affix is any bound morpheme attached to a root word to form a new word or word form with a new meaning. Because they are morphemes, affixes […]

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What Is a Suffix—and How Should You Use One?

GrammarBook.com — Mon, 10 Jan 2022 12:00:20 +0000

If you write, speak, and read English, you’ve likely come across the word suffix before. If you know what a suffix is and how it functions, you have a useful feather in your grammatical cap. If you are unsure of what a suffix is or don’t recall its applications from what you learned in school, […]

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Expressing Possession of Gerunds

GrammarBook.com — Wed, 14 Oct 2020 05:00:19 +0000

A gerund is the present participle (-ing) form of a verb functioning as a noun in a sentence. Example: He responded by laughing. (The gerund “laughing” is the noun object of the preposition “by.”) A gerund phrase is a gerund plus another element such as an adverb, an adjective, or a noun. Example: Saving money […]

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A Midsummer’s Musing on Miscellany

GrammarBook.com — Wed, 22 Jul 2020 05:00:49 +0000

Our regular readers might note that our study of American English periodically includes smaller but still noteworthy items we collect from research and reader correspondence. It’s been several months since our last musings on miscellany, so we thought we’d return for more as we approach midsummer 2020. (To review miscellany from the past two years, […]

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Detaining the Double Negative

GrammarBook.com — Wed, 20 Mar 2019 05:00:42 +0000

We recently reviewed how negative constructions both serve English expression and muddy it more than positive constructions will. Another aspect of English negation that deserves a closer look is the double negative. To convey something is incorrect or untrue, English offers words such as no, not, nothing, barely, scarcely, and hardly, as well as terms with cancelling prefixes such as improbable and […]

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Adjectives and Adverbs: Another Look at -ly

GrammarBook.com — Wed, 20 Feb 2019 05:00:26 +0000

Those who study English grammar will eventually review the adverbial ending -ly. GrammarBook last wrote about Adjectives and Adverbs: When to use -ly in October 2007; the post has remained on our website since then to offer guidance on using the suffix. More than eleven years later, however, we—and you too, perhaps—still often encounter misuse of the ending. For […]

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Notwithstanding, Can We Withstand Confusion of Meaning?

GrammarBook.com — Wed, 23 Jan 2019 05:00:36 +0000

Developing a rich vocabulary through the reading and writing of English adds color to our thoughts, our speech, and our lives. Through a growing lexicon, we convey and connect to others with clearer intention and meaning using greater precision and eloquence. We also sharpen our ability to see relationships among words by understanding their roots, […]

The post Notwithstanding, Can We Withstand Confusion of Meaning? first appeared on The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation.

Year-End Quiz 2018

GrammarBook.com — Wed, 09 Jan 2019 05:00:11 +0000

Another year of grammatical exploration has concluded with linguistic miles behind us. What we’ve learned and discussed with you along the way has been illuminating, and we are grateful for the thought and insight it has inspired. We hope you gathered even more sharpened tools for communicating in concise and eloquent English. A year-end review […]

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More Mulling Over Miscellany

GrammarBook.com — Wed, 19 Dec 2018 05:00:17 +0000

A few weeks ago we explored some English miscellany, linguistic bits perhaps too small for full and separate treatment yet still worthy of a closer look. Much of the miscellany to consider comes from you, our faithful, thoughtful readers. In our last article, we referred to such items as fireflies in a jar. Today we’ll […]

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Orwell and Newspeak

GrammarBook.com — Wed, 07 Nov 2018 05:00:16 +0000

It’s not just professors and snobs who deplore the decline of English. The great essayist and novelist George Orwell (1903-50) had much to say about the corruption of language—and how it enables tyranny. The warning was clear: a distracted populace with diminished reading, writing, and speaking skills is vulnerable. Orwell’s 1984, published in 1949, is […]

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