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Question from English4.today member Mahesh in India:

What is the difference between ‘would’ and ‘could’?

Hi Mahesh. This is a very common question and there seems to be a lot of confusion about what the difference is exactly between ‘would’ and ‘could’.

Answer

Let’s take a look at ‘would’ first:

‘Would’ for Unreal, Impossible or Hypothetical Situations

We probably see this most often in conditional sentences where we want to talk about a situation that is either not real or not likely to occur now or in the future. To do this we use a past tense of the verb in the if-clause and would + infinitive in the main clause. Have a look at these examples:

* If I knew how to speak French, I would visit France.* If she travelled by train, she would arrive this afternoon.

Contracting ‘Would’

Don’t forget that you can contract ‘would’ and that you will often see it as:

* I’d like to visit her. (= I would like to visit her).* They’d swim more often. (= They would swim more often)

‘Would Like’: Expressing a Desire for Something

OK.. that covers ‘would’ when we are talking about hypothetical situations but what if I say:

* I’d like a cup of tea, please. (= I would like …)* She’d like a Tomato Salad. (= She would like …)

Here, ‘would‘ is used as an auxiliary for the verb ‘to like‘ and takes on a special function of expressing desire for something. Notice that you cannot use ‘could‘ in this way.

‘Would Have’ to talk about something in the past that did not happen

Now, if we want to talk about something in the past that did not happen, we use had + past participle in the if clause and would have in the main clause. Look at these examples:

* If Simon had taken his passport, he wouldn’t have had a problem buying his ticket.* If Jenny and Max had remembered Mary’s birthday, she wouldn’t have been angry.* If I had lived in Australia I would have learned how to surf.

Hope your staying with this Mahesh – it’s a long posting as it has to cover quite a bit of territory so that you can really see where the differences are!

Now, lets look at ‘could’.

Could: Permission, requesting and expressing ability

We can use ‘could‘ to ask for permission, to express a possibility, make a request or express an ability to do something. Look at these examples:

* Could I borrow your car this evening? Mine is being repaired.* You could take the train. Then you won’t have any problems parking.* Yes, I could but I don’t know where the train station is.* Jonas could play the violin very well by the age of five.

‘Could Have’ to talk about hypothetical actions in the past that did not happen.

Until now I think the distinct usages of ‘would’ and ‘could’ have been pretty clear but here, with ‘could have‘ I’m afraid we are moving into an area where ‘could have’ and ‘would have‘ are very similar!

Like would have, (and should have … which we are not covering in this posting), could have can be used to talk about past hypothetical actions – things we did not do or other did not do or didn’t succeed in doing. For example:

* I could have gone to university if I had had better results at school.* I would have gone to university if I had had better results at school.

Now,

Question from English4Today member, Irene in Canada:

Using the services of my company ENSURES the task is completed correctly, on time & on budget!

OR

2) Using the services of my company INSURES the task is completed correctly, on time & on budget!

Also please explain how I can make this determination on my own in the future.

Hi Irene and thanks for your question as this seems to be a set of those easily confused words that we have not included in our list on the English4Today Grammar Pages.

We’ll make sure it is there soon though as assure, insure, ensure are, as you’ve pointed out, a group of words that we often confuse.

To assure something is to make certain that it will happen or has happened or to promise that something will be done as said:

* I assure you that I will be on time for work tomorrow.

* Economic prosperity is assured by the Presidential candidate if he is elected.

* The Presidential candidate assured his listeners that there would be no more poverty once she was elected

* They assured me that there was no danger swimming with the crocodiles.

* She assured me that she loved me even though she had forgotten my name.

To ensure something is to take steps to make sure that something happens:

* He ensured his own defeat in the election by failing to argue convincingly on any topic.

* Including air bags in cars ensures that you are protected when your car crashes.

* The captain ensured the safety of all of his passengers by double-checking the aircraft before takeoff.

To insure something is to take precautions against something undesirable happening and, of course, is best remembered when you think of an ‘insurance policy‘:

* You can insure yourself against losing your home by taking out a home insurance policy.

* The hostages were held by the terrorists as insurance against government attacks.

Now for the complications!

Ensure and insure are often used interchangeably to mean ‘to make sure of something‘. Practically, this means that as long as the meaning is ‘making sure of something‘ you can get away with using either one. Which means, of course, that both of your sentences would be correct. However, there are people who will insist upon using only ensure in this sense, using insure for talking about legal and financial protection and if you decided to follow this (rather small!) group then only your first sentence would be correct.

Insure is always used when referring to matters of legal and financial protection (e.g., insurance) :

* Insuring your car against theft is important if you live in a big city.

* I have insured myself against accidental death so that my children have some money if I die.

In terms of remembering all of this, Irene, I don’t know of any handy memory trick or mnemonic for this group but what I will do is put together an exercise for you over the next few days and post it to the members’ web with the link to it here so that you can do that a few times to reinforce your understanding of the words.

View Also:

* List of Easily Confused Words

* Free membership of English4Today

 

Question from Kayoko

The past tense of ‘overcome’ is ‘overcame’.

But I hardly hear people use ‘overcame’.  Instead, I hear “I have overcome the problems”.

Is this correct?

Hello Kayoko. Well this is just a confusion about tenses. You are quite right that the past tense of ‘overcome’ is ‘overcame’, by the way it follows the same form as the verb ‘to come’ – ‘come’,’came’ – the simple past, and ‘come’ the past participle. Take a look at the list of irregular verbs on English4Today – the link is at the end of the text to remind yourself of the simple past form and the past participle.

Now let’s see if we can overcome your problem!

First a couple of sentences where you would use the simple past ‘overcame’:

* She overcame all of the obstacles in her way and became an Olympic champion.

* David overcame a serious illness when he was young and is now an active adult.

In both sentences the use of the simple past is perfectly correct as we are refering to a completed past action.

Now let’s look at the sentence that you hear frequently: ‘I have overcome the problems’. If you look at it the first thing you notice is that there is the auxiliary verb ‘have’ in there – ‘I have overcome’ – this tells you that it is in the present perfect tense and therefore uses the past participle of ‘overcome’ which is, confusingly, ‘overcome’! The present perfect is used as there is no clear reference to a completed act in the past and the speaker is saying ‘up until this moment I have overcome all of the problems’.

If you are still a bit confused take a look through the sections on the use of the simple past and the present perfect in the English4Today Online Grammar and check the irregular verb list.

Other links:

* The Present Perfect

* The Simple Past

* Irregular Verb List

 

 Question from English4Today member Gireesh in the United Arab Emirates:

Which one of the following sentences is correct having the meaning like “cannot accept…” ?

1) We regret to accept your letter…..2) We regret not to accept your letter……

Hi Gireesh, I’m afraid neither one of your examples is correct. The verb ‘regret‘ is not followed by the infinitive form of the verb (e.g. ‘to accept’) but more usually by the gerund form (-ing) or by a relative pronoun such as ‘that‘. Of course, another problem here is that the verb for ‘regret accepting‘ does not mean the same as ‘cannot accept‘.

Let’s look at how we can use regret + accept to give the sense you want – we’ll have to add a little more to your sentences to do this:

* We regret not being able to accept your letter …

Now, we are using an equivalent of can (meaning having the ability to do something) which is ‘to be able to‘. We then need to make that negative not being able to and then follow that with the verb accept. Of course, you may find it easier to use this variation with the relative pronoun ‘that’ :

* We regret that we can’t accept your letter.

Or, try changing the verb ‘regret‘ into an adverb:

* Regrettably, we cannot accept your letter.

So you can see Gireesh, there’s more than one way to approach this but you have to know how to put the pieces together.

I’d suggest that you login to the members’ section of English4Today and go through some of the exercises in the grammar section and also take a look at the relative pronoun, verb formation and sentence structure sections of the English4Today Online Grammar.

Some of the most frequently asked questions that we get are about adverbs, often with a request for a complete list of adverbs. Now that is a pretty big request as there are hundreds and hundreds of adverbs in English! However, what I think we will do is, from time to time, post common adverbs with the category that they belong to as this seems to be a lot more useful for you than to just deliver a long list of words. So today I am going to have a look at adverbs of certainty.

ADVERBS OF CERTAINTY

These adverbs express how certain or sure we feel about an action or event.

Common adverbs of certainty include:

* certainly,definitely, probably, undoubtedly, surely

How to put them in a sentence

Adverbs of certainty are usually placed in the mid-position – after auxiliary verbs and before other verbs. If you have two or more auxiliaries, the adverb goes after the first one.

* Ghandi was undoubtedly a great influence on the peace movement.

* It will certainly rain this evening.

* I definitely need that report on my desk by tonight.

* Sharaz will probably be at the party tomorrow night.

* They have definitely been living in Turkey for ten years.

They go before the main verb but after the verb ‘to be’:

* He definitely left the house this morning.

* He is probably in the park.

With other auxiliary verbs, these adverbs go between the auxiliary and the main verb:

* He has certainly forgotten the meeting.

* He will probably remember tomorrow.

Sometimes these adverbs can be placed at the beginning of the sentence:

* Undoubtedly, Winston Churchill was a great politician.

BE CAREFUL! with surely. When it is placed at the beginning of the sentence, it means the speaker thinks something is true, but is looking for confirmation:

Example:

* Surely you’ve got a bicycle?

More on adverbs in the weeks to come!

Question: from Inês in Portugal

I´m Portuguese and in my language the word – it (he/she/it) doesn’t exist. it’s hard to understand how to use this word: Examples

1)The Olympic Games take place every four years. Why take and not takes?

2)The River Amazon flows into the Atlantic Ocean. Why flows and not flow?

I even understand the 2) but I don’t understand the 1) Please explain to me. Best Regards

Hi Inês. You’re actually asking a few questions here. One about the third person singular pronouns ‘he, she and it‘ and one about whether a certain subject such as the ‘Olympic Games‘ or the ‘Amazon River‘ take the singular form or the plural form of the verb.

Let’s look at the the first question about the third person pronoun ‘it‘:

In your language, as in many others such as French and Spanish, there is no gender neutral pronoun – that is, pronouns are either he or she (masculine or feminine) , for example in French we refer to a table as feminine (la table, elle est une belle table). In English, inanimate objects and abstractions (thoughts, feelings etc.) are usually referred to using ‘ it‘ – a gender neutral pronoun. There are, as you would expect, a few exceptions, for example, we often talk about babies and animals using ‘it‘:

* Is it a boy or a girl?

* Is it a Labrador?

* Mary’s had a baby. It‘s a girl!

* Where are you taking the dog? I’m taking it for a walk.

And, less frequently, we may refer to some specific inanimate objects,such as boats and ships, using ‘she‘:

* Is that your sailing boat? She‘s a lovely looking yacht.

* Yes, she‘s one of the fastest boats on the harbor.

However, you’re pretty safe using it if you are referring to anything that is not human and not alive!

* It was a beautiful day.

* It was a wonderful concert.

* I understood it after thinking about it for several hours.

* It needs a lot of concentration to play an instrument.

OK, now lets quickly look at the verb form using the two examples you sent in as the first one at least could be confusing.

Is ‘the Olympic Games’ a singular or plural noun? Well, a quick look through some dictionaries shows that it can be treated, just to make it more confusing for you, as either singular or plural which would make using either ‘take’ or ‘takes’ correct.

However, I’m going to throw in my own preference here because the word ‘Games’ is plural and I would personally use the plural form when referring to the ‘Olympic Games’. A matter of choice and how it sounds to your ear it seems! Not very precise but there we are – that is the nature of English.

For your second example there is no confusion, Inês, ‘the Amazon River‘ is singular and therefore takes the third person singular form ‘flows‘.

* More about forming verbs in English

Hope that has helped!

We get a lot of requests from our students asking for tips about writing good, clear English. So from time to time we are going to post an article here about an aspect of writing that will be of interest to our members and students, especially those students studying the English4Today Online Writing Courses. Today, I’m going to give you some tips about writing interesting and readable news stories and blog postings.

Although writing news stories may not seem that difficult, it does, like any type of writing, take thought and practice … and then some more practice and then, when that’s done, a little more practice! These tips won’t make an instant Pulitzer Prize winning journalist out of you but they will help … with that other magic ingredient … practice … to write better, clearer and more readable stories and topical blog articles.

The Five “W”s and the “H”

At the heart of any journalistic article or topical news blog you need to answer 5 key questions for your readers:

Who? What? Where? When? Why? How?

Good news stories will answer these questions in a clear and concise way. When you are planning your article or story always ask yourself if you are answering these key questions.

For example, if you are covering a story about a local politician running for election you will need to answer these questions:

* Who is the politician? Who are the opponents? Who is backing the politician? Who are the community supporters?

* What party does he/she belong to? What are their policies and politics? What is the current projected outcome of the election? What changes are they promising to make? What are they identifying as key issues?

* Where is the election (local, national, international etc.)? Where is the politician’s electorate and ‘home ground’?

* When is the election? How long has the politician been preparing their campaign?

* Why is he/she running for office? Why is the election being held?

* How will he/she change the political landscape after their election? How are they running their campaign? How much experience does she/he have in politics?

The Inverted Pyramid

Place the most important facts at the beginning and work “down” from there elaborating the detail from the initial facts that you have provided. The first paragraph should provide enough information to give the reader a good overview of the entire story and ‘hook’ them into wanting to read more. The rest of the article will explain and expand on the beginning.

Think like an editor: Will the story still work if you cut everything except the first few paragraphs? If not, re-arrange it so that it does. If the first few paragraphs says it all, perhaps you do not need to elaborate further. Be tough on your story and cut out anything that is not necessary.

Remember, a story is …

* About People

News stories are all about how people are affected by events and actions. In the election story above, you might spend time focusing on how the politician’s proposals may change the lives of one or more individuals and use some interview materials to back this up.

* Have an Angle

Most stories can be presented using a particular angle or “slant”. This is a standard technique and isn’t necessarily bad – it can help make the purpose of the story clear and give it focus. Examples of angles used in today’s Australian election stories:

* “Australian PM ‘faces losing seat” (BBC)

* “

Punctuation, especially in emails, seems to be an area that is virtually ignored. I’ve never been too fussy or pedantic about how English is written or spoken as I’m one of those who believe that as long as we are communicating and getting our meaning across then the main job is being done. But it’s worth remembering that meaning is given to a sentence not just from the relationship between nouns and verbs and their respective objects and actions but also through the way that the words are punctuated into ‘blocks’ where the relationship between the words is formed by the punctuation.

A very good demonstration of how effective punctuation can be in delivering meaning was given when an English teacher gave the following, unpunctuated, sentence to her students and asked them to punctuate it correctly. If you are listening to the podcast without seeing the text I am going to read the unpunctuated sentence as ‘robotically’ as I can as the voice, inevitably, brings its own organization and meaning into the sentence.

The sentence is:

“A woman without her man is nothing”

When she looked through the punctuated sentences she found:

All of the males in the class wrote:

“A woman, without her man, is nothing.”

All the females in the class wrote:

“A woman: without her, man is nothing.”

A good case for making sure that you have punctuated the sentence so that your reader knows exactly what your intended meaning is.

If you want to find out more about punctuation and using the various punctuation symbols have a look at the Punctuation Section of the English4Today Grammar

See also:

* English4Today Punctuation Section

Question from Rima in the USA:

This sentence is driving us crazy! I realize it could be called compound, complex, compound-complex, or just crazy, but I have to ask: Is this sentence technically written wrongly?

“In Canada, the Smith family of Toronto, who wanted to replace their old automobile with a new fuel-efficient vehicle that could travel greater distances at the same cost, sought advice from another Toronto native, Ed Johnson, who assisted engineers in designing what became the Smith-Johnson automobile, which the Smiths used for all of their family vacations to travel as far as Mexico City, Mexico.”

What do you call a sentence like this?

Answer:

Hi Rima. Well, what I would call this sentence is ‘too long‘!

Good reasons for changing punctuation and structure can often be found by reading out loud – if you’re out of breath at the end of the sentence I’d say it needs changing!

It is compound and it is complex but more than anything else it is a jumble of clauses and sub-clauses that make it nearly impossible to focus on which clause refers to which subject and object. My advice would be to re-write the sentence into several shorter, clearer sentences. One way would be like this:

In Canada, the Smith family of Toronto wanted to replace their old authomobile with a new fuel-efficient vehicle that could travel greater distances at the same cost. They sought advice from another Toronto native, Ed Johnson. Mr Johnson assisted engineers in designing what became the Smith-Johnson automobile. The Smiths used this vehicle for all of their family vacations and to travel as far as Mexico City, Mexico.

In terms of the word count the paragraph is about the same but by breaking it up into shorter sentences we’ve been able to clarify each statement and provide an easier to read version of your ‘marathon’ sentence example!

Question from Randall in the USA:

In quoting a line from a book, is it correct to use the word “wrote” or “writes” as in;

* In his book, Good English, Joe Smith writes, “English is good.”

or

* In his book, Good English, Joe Smith wrote, “English is good.”?

Answer:

Hi Randall and thanks for your question.

You’re quite right to be a bit confused about this as you will have been taught that when an action, such as writing a book, is finished, we should use the Simple Past. And you would be quite correct if you wrote:

* In his book, Good English, Joe Smith wrote, “English is good.”

The confusion exists because when we are quoting what a writer has written in a book, newspaper or magazine we can use more than one tense despite the fact that the writing is, of course, finished. We can say:

* In his book, Good English, Joe Smith has written, “English is good.”

(Present Perfect)

* In his book, Good English, Joe Smith writes, “English is good.”

(Simple Present)

All of these are acceptable and don’t really change the meaning or intention of the sentence. Perhaps using the Present Perfect or Simple Present gives the quote a greater sense of immediacy and of being current but it is a fairly fine distinction.

Maybe, Randall, it is enough to know that you would not be wrong if you used any of the above tenses.

See also:

* Present Perfect

* Simple Present

* Simple Past