| The American Heritage® Book of English Usage. |
A Practical and Authoritative Guide to Contemporary English. 1996.
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Page 41
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this
| | this and
that
| | This and that are both demonstrative pronouns that refer to a thought expressed earlier: The letter was unopened; that (or this) in itself casts doubt on the inspector’s theory. That is sometimes viewed as the better choice in referring to what has gone before (as in the preceding example). When what is referred to has not yet been mentioned, only this is used: This (not that) is what bothers me: we have no time to consider late applications. | 1 |
| this as informal substitute for
a /
an
| | This is often used in speech and informal writing as an emphatic substitute for the indefinite article to refer to a specific thing or person: You should talk to this friend of mine at the Department of Motor Vehicles. I have this terrible feeling that I forgot to turn off the water. But it’s best to avoid this substitution in formal writing except when you want to create a conversational tone. | 2 |
| More at
that. | 3 |
used to
| | We use the verb use in its past tense with an infinitive to indicate a past condition or habitual practice: We used to live in that house. Because the -d in used is not pronounced in these constructions, people sometimes mistakenly leave it out when writing. Thus it is incorrect to write We use to play tennis. When do occurs with this form of use in negative statements and in questions, the situation is reversed, and use to (not used to) is correct: You did not use to play on that team. Didn’t she use to work for your company? | 4 |
verbs, mood of
| | A mood is a property of verbs that indicates the attitude of the speaker about the factuality or likelihood of what is expressed. The term mood is also applied to the sets of verb forms that convey this attitude. English has three moods. The indicative mood, which is by far the most common, is used to make statements. The sentences Wilson enjoys music and The dog ran across the street are in the indicative mood. The imperative mood is used to give direct commands, such as Get out of here! or Stop shouting! The subjunctive mood is used to indicate doubt or unlikelihood, as were in If she were here, we wouldn’t be in this fix. The subjunctive has very limited use in English, having been largely supplanted by modal auxiliaries like may and might. Nonetheless, the subjunctive still has its uses and its usage problems. | 5 |
| More at
subjunctive. | 6 |
verbs, principal parts of
| | Verbs are words that express an action or a state of being. All English verbs that are not auxiliary verbs have four principal parts: a base form (the infinitive without to), a present participle, a past tense, and a past participle. The principal parts are used to form tenses. All present participles are formed by the addition of -ing to the base form: making, breaking, crying. Grammars usually classify verbs as regular and irregular. Regular verbs form their past tense and past participle by adding the suffix -ed to the base form. Thus we say I walked, I have walked, They plodded, They have plodded, She tried, We had tried, and so on. As these examples show, the spelling of these forms sometimes involves modification of the base form. The rules for spelling the principal parts of regular verbs are discussed under Word Formation. | 7 |
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| The American Heritage® Book of English Usage. Copyright © 1996 by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. |
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