English Grammar — The Rules Tested Every Year

A word has no fixed part of speech; its job in the sentence decides. In The round table is round, the same word is first an adjective and then a complement. The paper exploits exactly this: it puts an adjective where an adverb belongs (He drives careless for He drives carelessly) and hopes you read past it.

A verb must agree with its subject in number and person. The whole difficulty is finding the subject, because the paper buries it under intervening phrases. Strike out everything between the subject and the verb, then read them together: The list of candidates ~~selected for the interview~~ has been published — the subject is list, singular.

The paper rarely asks you to name a tense. It gives you a time marker and checks whether your verb form matches it. Learn the markers and you have learnt the chapter: since / for / already / just / yet / so far point to the perfect; yesterday / last week / in 1995 / ago force the simple past; by next year forces the future perfect.

• Verbs of state are not used in continuous tenses: know, believe, understand, mean, own, belong, contain, consist, resemble, seem, love, hate, prefer. Say I know him, not I am knowing him.
• After No sooner and Hardly / Scarcely the auxiliary comes first: No sooner had he arrived than the meeting began. Hardly had she spoken when the bell rang.
• A universal truth stays in the simple present even after a past reporting verb: The teacher said that the earth revolves round the sun.
• For a wish contrary to fact use were: I wish I were taller. He talks as if he were the owner.
• A timetabled future event may take the simple present: The train leaves at six tomorrow.

The choice between a and an depends on the sound that follows, not the letter. A vowel sound takes an; a consonant sound takes a. That is why we write an hour (the h is silent, so the word begins with the /au/ sound) but a university (the u is pronounced /yoo/, a consonant sound), and an MP (the letter M is read /em/, a vowel sound).

• Use the for something already known or unique: the sun, the moon, the earth, the Prime Minister. Also with superlatives: the tallest tower.
• Use the with rivers, seas, oceans, deserts, gulfs, mountain ranges, island groups and plural country names: the Ganga, the Arabian Sea, the Thar, the Himalayas, the Andamans, the Netherlands, the Philippines. But NOT with a single peak: Mount Everest.
• Use the with newspapers, holy books, musical instruments and inventions: the Hindu, the Ramayana, play the flute, the telephone.
• Use the before an adjective to mean the whole class: the blind, the unemployed, the elderly.
• Zero article before languages, subjects, games, meals and most proper nouns: He speaks English. She teaches physics. They play hockey. We had lunch late.
• Zero article in fixed purpose phrases: go to school, go to bed, in hospital, in prison, at home, by bus, on foot, at night. Add the only when you mean the building: The ambulance stopped at the hospital.
• Zero article before an abstract or material noun used in a general sense: Honesty is the best policy. Gold is precious.

Prepositions cannot be reasoned out; they must be memorised as fixed pairs. The word decides its preposition, so store the two together as one unit: not superior and then a guess, but superior to. Below are the pairs the paper returns to most often.

• Time: at a clock time (at 5 p.m.), on a day or date (on Monday, on 15 August), in a month, year or long period (in July, in 1947, in the morning). But at night, at noon, at dawn.
• Place: at a point (at the gate), in an enclosed area (in Kolkata), on a surface (on the wall). Note arrive at a small place, arrive in a country or city.
• between two, among more than two: Divide the sweets between the two children and among the five guests.
• beside means next to, besides means in addition to: He sat beside her. Besides English, he knows Tamil.
• since is used with a point of time and a perfect tense; from is used with a starting point and any tense: He has worked here since 2019. He will work from Monday.
• in spite of and despite mean the same, but despite takes no of: Despite the rain / In spite of the rain.

Two families of rules, both heavily tested. In comparison, the paper checks whether you doubled a comparative, compared unlike things, or used a superlative where a comparative belonged. In pronouns, it checks case, reflexive misuse and the choice of relative pronoun.

• Never double a comparative or a superlative: more better, more superior, most best, more preferable are all wrong. Write better, superior, the best, preferable.
• Absolute adjectives admit no degree: unique, perfect, complete, universal, ideal, extreme, entire, round, square, supreme, eternal, infinite, chief. So a unique idea, not a very unique idea or the most unique idea.
• In the pattern the + comparative … the + comparative, both halves need the: The higher you climb, the colder it gets. The sooner, the better.
• Comparing one member with the rest of its own group needs any other or all the other: Kolkata is bigger than any other city in the region. Drop other only when the groups differ: Kolkata is bigger than any city in Bhutan.
• With only two items use the + comparative, not the superlative: He is the taller of the two brothers, not the tallest of the two.
• Latin comparatives take to, never than: superior, inferior, senior, junior, prior, posterior, anterior, preferable.
• Intensify a positive with very and a comparative with much: very good, much better — never very better.
• Compare like with like. His salary is higher than mine (salary with salary), not higher than me.
• elder / eldest only within a family and only before a noun (my elder brother); use older … than for comparison. later refers to time, latter to the second of two, latest to the most recent, last to the final one. farther is distance, further is additional.

• A reflexive pronoun is never a subject. Myself Ramesh and Myself and my brother went are both wrong; write I am Ramesh and My brother and I went.
• Some verbs need a reflexive object: absent oneself, avail oneself of, pride oneself on, enjoy oneself, acquit oneself, exert oneself, resign oneself, accustom oneself, reconcile oneself, avenge oneself. He absented himself from duty. She availed herself of the offer.
• Other verbs must NOT take one: keep, stop, turn, move, bathe, hide, rest, open, qualify, spread. He kept quiet, not kept himself quiet.
• Once you begin with one, continue with one / one’s: One should keep one’s promises, not his promises.
• Relative pronouns: who for persons as subject, whom for persons as object, which for things and animals, whose for possession. Use that after a superlative, after all, only, any, none, nothing, same, it is, and when the antecedent covers both a person and a thing: This is the best film that I have seen.
• Use each other for two people and one another for more than two: The two sisters helped each other; the five teammates encouraged one another.
• Pronoun order is you, he and I for something pleasant, and I, you and he when owning up to a fault: I, you and he are to blame.

A modal is followed by the bare infinitive — the plain first form with no to: He must go, never must to go. Two modals cannot stand together either: He will can do it must become He will be able to do it.

Correlative conjunctions come in fixed pairs, and both halves must sit before grammatically matching items. Not only did he arrive late but also he left early is clumsy; He not only arrived late but also left early balances two verbs against each other. That balance is what examiners call parallelism.

• Fixed pairs: either … or, neither … nor, both … and, not only … but also, whether … or, no sooner … than, hardly / scarcely … when, such … that, so … that, too … to, not … but, as … as, so … as (in negatives).
• No sooner pairs with than, never with then or when. Hardly and scarcely pair with when or before, never with than.
• Although / Though pairs with yet, never with but: Although he is poor, yet he is content.
• Do not use because and so together. Because he was ill, he stayed at home — or He was ill, so he stayed at home — but not both.
• Unless and until already carry a negative, so never add not: Unless you work hard, you will fail. Wait until I return.
• Lest is followed by should and never by not: Walk carefully lest you should slip.
• For negative comparison prefer so … as: He is not so tall as his brother.
• Keep the items in a series in the same grammatical form: He likes swimming, reading and cycling — not and to cycle.
• Write The reason is that …, never The reason is because ….