Getting to grips with grammar

Abstract

Many people speak and write English quite correctly without knowing very much about the rules and conventions of the English language. They automatically apply them without thinking or realising that they are doing so. Most of us, because we have been brought up to speak English as our mother tongue, are able for the most part to put down words in the right order; that is, in a way that other people expect, and understand fairly easily. Most of us, for example, would recognise that to write: ‘I haven’t never been their’ is wrong. It is wrong because ‘their’ is used when we are indicating possession of something — ‘their coats’, ‘their children’ — but it is not spelled like that when we are referring to a place. It is also wrong because two negatives cancel one another out — ‘I haven’t never’ = ‘I have not never’ = ‘I have’, which is presumably the exact opposite of what the speaker meant to say.