📗 “I don’t understand you,” said Alice. “It’s dreadfully confusing!” “That’s the effect of living backwards,” the Queen said kindly: “it always makes one a little giddy at first—” “Living backwards!” Alice repeated in great astonishment. “I never heard of such a thing!” – Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass (1871) … Have you ever read […]
Lesson #223: Avoiding confusion in your writing: 3 Punctuation Tips Read More »
📙 ‘There was all the more time for me to hear old-world stories from Miss Pole, while she sat knitting, and I making my father’s shirts.’ – Elizabeth Gaskell, Cranford (1853) … ✏️ (If you missed the first part of this Lesson on prepositions of time, you can find it here). ✏️ … 📝 #5
📙 ‘Miss Matty and I quietly decided that we would have a previous engagement at home: it was the evening on which Miss Matty usually made candle-lighters of all the notes and letters of the week; for on Mondays her accounts were always made straight— not a penny owing from the week before; so, by
💮 Spring is such a beautiful season! A few evenings ago, as I was walking in the garden, I saw the sunlight touching these blueberry flowers and had to stop to appreciate the beauty of the moment. I took a photograph of them of course, but nothing compares with the experience of seeing flowers like
Lesson #221: How and When To Use Paragraph Breaks in Writing Read More »
‘Annabel Lee’ (1849) It was many and many a year ago, In a kingdom by the sea, That a maiden there lived whom you may know By the name of Annabel Lee; And this maiden she lived with no other thought Than to love and be loved by me. .. I was a child and she was a
Lesson #219: ‘Annabel Lee’: Edgar Allan Poe’s Melodious and Melodramatic Poem Read More »
📗 “I am very glad to hear it indeed, and now I shall never be ashamed of liking Udolpho myself. But I really thought before, young men despised novels amazingly.” “It is amazingly; it may well suggest amazement if they do— for they read nearly as many as women. I myself have read hundreds and
📗 Thorpe told her it would be in vain to go after the Tilneys; they were turning the corner into Brock Street, when he had overtaken them, and were at home by this time. “Then I will go after them,” said Catherine; “wherever they are I will go after them. It does not signify talking.
📗 “I have broken where I should have bent; and have mused and brooded, when my spirit should have mixed with all God’s great creation. The men who learn endurance, are they who call the whole world, brother. I have turned from the world, and I pay the penalty.” – Charles Dickens, Barnaby Rudge (1841)
Lesson #206: Understanding, Identifying, and Using Relative Adverb Clauses in Writing Read More »
Welcome to Part 2 of our Lesson, where we will focus on understanding ‘be used to’ and what makes it uniquely different from ‘used to’ constructions (covered in Part 1 of this Lesson). … 📝 ‘BE USED TO’ Be (conjugate the verb) + Used To + Gerund OR Noun ✍️ This construction expresses a state
‘Used to’ or ‘be used to’? 🤔 At first glance it might seem that both of these expressions are the same, but they are not! They imply (help us to understand something without actually saying it directly) two different things. Today’s Lesson will help to clarify the differences between them, with examples taken from another
📜 Where true Love burns Desire is Love’s pure flame; It is the reflex of our earthly frame, That takes its meaning from the nobler part, And but translates the language of the heart. – Samuel Taylor Coleridge This very short but thoughtful poem is our text for today’s poetry-based Lesson (you may have noticed
Lesson #204: Considering Coleridge’s poem ‘Desire’ from 3 different perspectives Read More »
🌼I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o’er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils … – William Wordsworth, ‘The Daffodils’ (1807) 🌼 This is Part 2 of our Lesson on ‘Different Ways of Seeing’: having read Wordsworth’s poem in Part 1, we