The words conscience and consciousness can cause a good deal of confusion, due in some measure to the similarities in their spelling and pronunciation, so let’s have a proper look at them.
Image by Fathromi Ramdlon from Pixabay
Conscience /ˈkɒnʃəns/ can mean one of the two things:
the part of your mind that tells you whether what you are doing is morally right or wrong; i.e. we can call it our inner moral compass.
I knew I’d done nothing wrong and so I told him the truth with a clear conscience.
If you’ve done something you shouldn’t and know it, you probably have a guilty or troubled conscience.
Steve’s guilty/troubled conscience made him tell Anna he’d been cheating on her.
Meter and metre. Isn’t it the same thing just spelt differently in American and British English? Well, yes and no.
Metre… Image by ElisaRiva from Pixabay
Yes, meter is the American spelling of metre, a unit of length that equals 100 centimetres.
The fence is about a metre and a half high. (Note the British English spelling!)
In British English, however, a meter is a machine that measures something, be it the amount of gas/water/electricity you’ve used or the amount of money you must pay.
… and meter. Image by analogicus from Pixabay
A few times a year Thames Water sends their engineers round to check water meter readings.
As the taxi was moving slowly through the traffic jam, she looked nervously at the meter wondering if she had enough money to pay for the trip.
This is a Pay and Display car park, but as the parking meter is broken you can park free of charge.
Easy, eh?
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The adjectives electric and electrical are easy to confuse as they are very close in meaning. Close but not identical. So what’s the difference between them?
Image by Comfreak from Pixabay
We use electric to talk about things that need electricity to work, e.g. we say an electric guitar, anelectric kettle, an electric car.
We bought a new electric cooker.
Electric is also used in an electric atmosphere (=full of excitement).
The atmosphere in the exam room was electric.
On the other hand, electrical is used to refer to electricity-powered things in general as well as people whose job is to make or repair them.
This supermarket sells not only food but also clothes and small electrical appliances such as kettles, coffee machines and toasters.
We need a certified electrical engineer to rewire the house.
Hopefully, next time you need to choose between electric and electrical, you’ll have no trouble picking the right one.
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Why is it OK to say This house is very big but not This house is very enormous?
Well, there are two types of adjectives – gradable and non-gradable.
Image by Wynn Pointaux from Pixabay
Gradable adjectives refer to qualities that have different degrees. For example, big, cold, tasty, tall, boring and pretty are all gradable adjectives because something can be a bit / rather / slightly / extremely big etc.
Non-gradable adjectives describe qualities of extreme or absolute nature. As enormous already means ‘very big’, why would you use another very to emphasise it?
Now, with gradable adjectives we use grading adverbs such as a bit, slightly, hugely, extremely and very.
I’m a bit tired.
This film is hugely popular.
It’s extremely cold in Antarctica.
She’s very angry.
With non-gradable adjectives we use non-grading adverbs such as absolutely, completely, perfectly, simply, almost and mainly.
I’m completely exhausted.
His plan is simply unthinkable.
It’s absolutely freezing today!
She was absolutely furious.
Now, there’s one particular phrase which is perfectly grammatical but annoys me a lot when I hear people say it. It’s very beautiful. The problem here is, I guess, a simultaneous use of two extremely overused words. With so many synonyms and near-synonyms available, it’s really easy to add variety to your speech. Please pick and choose!
Bad punctuation can be as destructive as bombs! In his book The Queen’s English and How to use it Bernard C. Lamb tells a story as amusing as it is sad about how one missing comma can have devastating consequences.
Back in 1984 a station in East Lothian, Scotland, was wrongly demolished because a comma was missing from the British Rail planning document. The list of items to preserve should have read: ‘Retain Drem Station, bridge…’ Unfortunately for the station building, the comma after ‘Station’ was missing, the station was pulled down and had to be rebuilt. The bridge survived.
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Alan Alexander Milne (1882 – 1956) was an English author, known in all corners of the world thanks to his books about a teddy bear called Winnie-the-Pooh. He also wrote poetry. I chose his verse The Three Foxes to share with you today because it reminds me of a curious linguistic anecdote.
Have you ever questioned the purpose of the silent H in ‘ghost’? It’s absolutely useless, but there’s a great story behind it.
It goes back to William Caxton, an English merchant and
diplomat, who lived in the 15th century. While in Germany, he became familiar
with Gutenberg’s latest invention – the printing press, – and liked the idea so
much that he set up one of his own in Flanders.
