21st Century Grammar Handbook
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21st century grammar, transformation, transformation, - - - .pdf;filename*= UTF-8''অনুবাদ চর্চা (প্রথম আলো পত্রিকা থেকে-২৯-০৩-২০২০)-1, 21st century grammar
| Collective pronoun. Collective pronouns like “none” are generally singular and agree with singular verbs. But standard English is evolving in this regard, nding acceptable the use of none with plural verbs in many cases. See agreement. Colloquial. Everyday speech and writing are called colloquial a word whose derivation suggests two important aspects of grammar and usage. Colloquial comes from Latin roots having to do with both talking and words it evidently was used in ancient times to distinguish the formal, high style of communicating from the mundane, day-to-day language of the people. While the ancients could perhaps make such a distinction clearly—between the way to talk or write in di erent, easily separated forums—in our age the “formal” and the familiar mix and blur. In part, the fuzzing of borders between high and low styles results from the twentieth-century literary trend toward incorporating speech patterns into written art (a trend not limited to but most marked in our age). More and more words were written in poems, stories, and novels as various populations spoke them, and more and more variants and violations of grammar rules and standards began to appear in print as are ection of the looser way people speak. Newspapers, magazines, and other public forms of communication led or furthered this deformalization of communication, as did the explosion of commercial and business writing that became more public in our age as education became universal, the working place became an acceptable topic of conversation and writing, and daily lives of all people took center stage in general. With the emergence of the colloquial came the decline of the formal, standard, rule-driven ways of speaking and writing. Decline, but not disappearance. There are still many moments, places, and people that demand grammatically correct language. And, as is pointed out repeatedly in this book, the safest, clearest, most economical way to communicate is still standard English inmost circumstances. However, it is also true that violations of virtually every rule of English grammar in someway in speech and writing have been, quite rightly, rewarded with the loftiest recognition and prizes. Similarly, grammatically correct but stu y, stilted, boring language has been, again quite rightly, mercilessly mocked in satire, comedy, and other forums. The demand to speak the common language, to make oneself understood to as many people as possible is profoundly democratic and pervasive in our society. It allows the colloquial to penetrate the high, formal style at will. That means the choices available to writers and speakers today are immense, but guidance in deciding what is the right choice in the right circumstance is harder to come by. Perhaps that is a price of democratization of language. See also dialect and language. Colon. The colon punctuation mark (:) sets o two more or less equal but quite distinct parts of a sentence. It can introduce lists, stand before full sentences that exemplify what previous clauses have delineated, or simply indicate that what follows illustrates what has gone before. Unlike a semicolon, which makes an abrupt break between segments of a sentence, the colon suggests that what follows is somehow equivalent to or illustrative of what has come before it. Here are some examples We saw the following a car, abridge, a horse Your order consists of two parts the main shipment and the packaging The president made the following statement Dear friends…’”. Note that anything following a colon is not capitalized unless it begins a full sentence (as when a colon is used to introduce a quotation) or is a word that in itself requires capitalization (such as a name). Generally, a colon is not necessary if no punctuation or simpler marking is possible. Thus a listing of items need not be introduced by a colon (We saw a car, abridge, and a horse He said, Dear friends ”). Use a colon mainly when it is necessary to draw some attention to a separate but equivalent part of a sentence. |