Basic knowledge of grammar is absolutely necessary for your success in life. Good grammar will help you to write better essay when you go to college and eventually it will help you to get a better job. The person is often being judged by the way he speaks and writes. If you make a lot of mistakes people will come to a conclusion that you are badly educated and not very intelligent. Good grammar is essential if you want to achieve something special in life. In one of the previous posts we discussed the ways you could improve your grammar, from reading a lot to using online grammar resources. Today we will talk about some basic grammar rules that everyone should know. If you have problems with grammar and make a lot of mistakes in your writing, it is better if you have a professional editor to work on your paper. You can place your order online right now and your essay will be revised, edited and proofread quickly and for a very moderate price.

The rules we are going to talk about are very simple but many people forget about them or simply disregard them. That is why we decided to refresh them in our memory. Everyone has his or her own weaknesses in grammar but would be impossible to list them all here. Instead we will name the rules that are most commonly misused. If you want to see a full comprehensive list of all grammar rules you can visit this page. Here is our list of basic grammar rules you should remember:

• Verb follows the subject. This is the most important foundational rule of English language but still it is being very often misused. Every sentence must have a subject (noun), which is followed by a predicate (verb). For example: A girl eats a candy. If a subject or predicate is missing then it is not a sentence but a phrase. Don’t forget about this basic rule when you compose your essay or another academic paper because it might cost you a good grade. By the way, if you search for some essay topic ideas you can read some free essay samples on our blog;
• Use the Simple Present tense for regular actions. I am sure that all of you know how to form a verb in the Present Simple tense by adding the ending –s in the third person singular. The mistake that many people make rather concerns the appropriate usage of the Present Simple. Everyone one should remember that the Simple Present is used to describe habitual or regular actions of the subject. For example if I say: I play tennis. It means that I play tennis regularly, maybe even every day. It is a repeated action that happens on a regular basis. Don’t use the Simple Present tense for describing what you are doing at the present moment;
• Use the Present Progressive tense for continuous action in the present. This tense and the other from above are often being confused. If you want to sound intelligent you should remember to apply the Present Continuous tense if you want to describe the current action. For example: I am cutting the trees in the garden. It would mean you are doing it right now; you are in the middle of action and will keep doing it for some time in the future. But if instead you say: I cut the trees. The person you are talking to might think you do it for living;
• Don’t confuse Gerund and Progressive. These both structures have the same form (verb+ing) so sometimes it is very difficult to tell one from another. To understand the difference let’s look at their main functions. The Gerund always functions as a noun. For example: Biking is a healthy hobby. In this case biking is a name of the sport. The Progressive form has more functions than Gerund. It can express a continuous aspect: What have you been watching? It can serve as an adjective: The movie showed some horrifying scenes. And lastly it can create participle clauses: Eating his soup, he found a fly in it. You can see many examples and read more about the ing-forms of English on this grammar portal;
• Apostrophe usage. It is another seemingly simple but very commonly misused aspect of English grammar. An apostrophe inserted in the wrong place in your resume or cover letter might prevent you from getting your dream job. The apostrophe in English language is used show either contraction or possession. Contraction is performed to cut the distance between a pronoun and a verb. For example: you’re, they’ve, and I’d. It is very important not to confuse words and phrases like their and they’re, its and it’s, etc. In both examples the first word is a possession and the second is a contraction between a pronoun and a verb. The other function of the apostrophe is to express possession. For example: Bob’s car, mother’s dress. If the noun either singular or plural ends with –s then you should place the apostrophe after it, as in these examples: Markus’ book, bus’ window, girls’ room;
• Memorize homophones. Homophones are the words that sound the same but have different meaning and spelling. They are very easy to mix up and make you look very silly if you misuse them. The best thing you can do is to memorize them. Let’s look at some of the most commonly confused examples.

• Affect (verb) and effect (noun). The side effects affected his brain.
• Advise (verb) and advice (noun). He advised me to follow his advice.
• Plain (adjective) and plane (noun). The plane flew over the plains.
• Bare (adjective) and bear (noun). His feet were bare when he saw a bear.
• Hear (verb) and here (adverb). Come here to hear this noise.

These are just few examples but English language is full of homophones the full list of which you can see at this web site dedicated to homophones.

Just from these few rules and examples you can see how tricky and confusing English grammar can be. However if you want to achieve some success at your job or studies you need to have strong grammar skills. If you are not sure your essay or other academic paper is grammatically correct and free of misused words, misspellings or punctuation errors, you should better use assistance of a professional editor and proofreader. Find out more about our editing and proofreading services from this article and don’t hesitate to upload your document for revision.