That vs which

During a very enjoyable afternoon of internet browsing, I image-googled 'that vs which', and this image came up:

Mysterious.

So, when do you use that, and when do you use which?

The easiest way to remember how to use these two words correctly is to remember that you use that for a restrictive clause, and which for everything else.

A restrictive clause is a clause that limits what is being talked about. For example:

Dogs that bark get kidnapped around here.

In these clauses, you can't just leave out the bit about barking, because the kind of dogs we are talking about is restricted to dogs that bark.

However, if you say:

Dogs, which bark, get kidnapped around here

It means that it is not just dogs that bark that get kidnapped, but pretty much any dog that gets kidnapped. The barking bit is just extra information that might give you when they are overly interested in details.

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo

Here's the situation: the sentence Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo is a grammatically correct sentence that has a meaning.

The sentence uses three different meanings of 'buffalo'.

1. the city of Buffalo, New York, United States

2. the noun buffalo as in the animal; and

3. the verb 'buffalo' meaning to bully, confuse, deceive, or intimidate.

This means that the sentence if split up like this:

Marking each 'buffalo' with its use as shown above gives:

Buffalo(1) buffalo(2) Buffalo(1) buffalo(2) buffalo(3) buffalo(3) Buffalo(1) buffalo(2)

So that the meaning of the sentence is:

Bison from Buffalo, New York, who are intimidated by other bison in their community, also happen to intimidate other bison.

If this is still not making a lot of sense, think of it like this: If you replaced the verb 'buffalo' with 'intimidate', and the noun 'buffalo' with the word 'people', the sentence would read:

Buffalo people that Buffalo people intimidate also intimidate people.

It's clear that this is some crazy shit. It's an example of how homonyms can be used.

Homonyms are words that have the same spellings and pronunciations, but different meanings. Other examples of homonyms are:

Bass (e.g. I enjoy bass fishing and play the bass guitar)  
   
Lead  (e.g. the group's lead singer had made some enemies, and carried a lead pipe for protection.)

The amazing thing about this crazy homonym sentence is that is a completely valid sentence in the form that you see it in  – it doesn't really even need punctuation, unless you are a bit of a comma-lover.

 'I'm sorry, were you talking to me, or were you referring to the city of Buffalo. Or perhaps you were referring to the colloquial term 'buffalo', meaning 'to bully'? It's all so confusing! How did we even get this far as a species?'

Bear in mind – the correct spelling of a phrase, or a terrifying psychotic episode?

A lot of words have more than one meaning. Sometimes, it's as though these words are taunting us like potholes in the roads of our happiness, causing us to find ourselves helplessly stuck in a hole of misunderstanding. The double meaning of bear is an excellent example of these terrible, confusing potholes, not least when it is used in the context of the term 'bear in mind'.

You, like many other sexy and intelligent people, have probably said to yourself more than once, 'hang on, it can't be 'bear' in mind because 'bear' is an animal. It must be the other word that sounds a bit like bear, which is 'bare' in mind. Yes it must be 'bare in mind', as a bear in mind would be a terrifying psychotic episode brought on by a hereditary or lifestyle influence. But before we suffer in the darkness any longer, let's separate the lies from the truth here.

The word bear has two meanings:

1. A large, furry animal that can kill you

2. To carry, e.g. ' They came bearing gifts'

And so, the phrase 'bear in mind' refers to the second meaning of bear, as in 'carry this thought in your mind'.

And so, another grammar pothole has been filled in, making your journey to grammar nirvana smooth and joyous.

Breaking news: MC Grammar reveals his real name

Friends, lovers, avid followers and solicitors of sexual favours. For years I have hidden behind my street name, MC Grammar, and you have patiently accepted this and referred to me by this name, even though in your heart of hearts you must have known that that was not the name that my smart and bold mama gave me.

So now it's time to reveal to you that my real name is James Prometheus Wiki III. The reason I want to reveal this to you is because that's what friends do when they have known each other for a while, and I trust you with this information.

Now, a few years ago I discovered that I had a real talent for helping people and giving them helpful life advice. Around the same time, I was becoming very savvy at the internet. I had added a number of helpful facts onto internet and I decided that it would be great if I had my own internet website that gave people facts. I commenced going about buying a domain name, and I thought it would be fantastic if I created a website that was like consulting an encyclopedia in real life! Therefore, I tried to buy a domain site called ‘wiki-pedia’. Imagine my shock when I discovered that the domain site ‘wikipedia.com’ had already been bought. I went away to try and deal with my anger, and after some self-reflection, I decided that my helpful site would be just as useful if I called it ‘Wiki-How’. To my frustration and rage, wikihow.com had also already been purchased.

Following this, I developed incontinence for a while. It was a terrible time, but I realised after a while that it was just psychological. I decided to create a website for people who had gone through the same struggle with their bladders, but then, to my utter devastation,  I discovered that the domain site ‘wikileaks.com’ had also been bought. Why was it that the world was always one step ahead of me? Why was it that every time I had a vision of how I could change the world, someone else had already seen it, and made it their own?

Then something wonderful occurred to me. I realised that it wasn't important what I called my helpful website, as long as I was helping people with their problems.

With renewed zeal, I embarked on a very happy life of explaining grammar, and let me tell you, I have never looked back.
And with all of this cleared up, let's move on to the wonderful world of non-countable nouns.

Non-countable nouns, also known as uncountable nouns or mass nouns, are things that can't be divided into separate elements. In other words, they can't be 'counted'.

For example, instead of saying a milk, you should say a glass of milk, because even if you literally owned all the milk in the world, you still couldn't have a  milk. That would be like having a dirt, or a pollen.

Examples of non-countable verbs are:
advice, information, news

furniture, luggage

rice, sugar, butter, water

electricity, gas,

money, currency

And if you don't have the specific words to describe the noun you are talking about, you can always just use some, any, little and much with non-countable nouns:I've got some money.

Have you got any rice?

I haven't got much advice for you

I've got a little money.

These are also known as quantifying adjectives, because they indicate amounts. Some other ways you can refer to a non-countable verb are:

A piece of news

A bottle of water

A grain of rice


We have now made some considerable progress in the world of non-countable nouns, which I am very happy about. I realise now that my role is to help with grammar, not to launch a multi-million dollar general help site that advices people on all manner of things. But to reminisce about that youthful dream I once had, let's appreciate these fun and cool girls as they help the world with its kissing.

Definitely a post you should read

I feel shame. It's the kind of shame that you know you should have, and you attend years of cognitive therapy to see how irrational your shame is, but when you're lying in your four-poster bed in the dark, you can't help but feel like you're just a really a bad person.

You see, despite all my wonderful qualities, it is pretty often that I misspell the word definitely.

Yes, even me, who loves grammar so much that my children are named 'Suffix', 'Elipsis' and 'Dash' sometimes falters when I am called upon to remember whether you spell definitely or definitley.

The short story is it's definitely. You might think that that's confusing, because it's not like you say definit-elly, but you see, the e in definitely is silent. In this case, definite is the main part of the word, while -ly is the suffix.

A suffix is a group of letters that are at the end of a word to make a new word. The most common example of a suffix is the s that is added to the end of things, like cats, to indicate that something is plural.

Other examples of suffixes include:

Suffix    Original Word   Suffixed Word

en          Eat                      Eaten

ing         Sleep                  Sleeping

al           accident             accidental

able         tax                       taxable

ly           brother                brotherly

ful           forget                  forgetful

ly           helpful                   helpfully


We have now learnt not only about prefixes but also suffixes, so to top all this off, let's listen to this rap that puts it all together:
 

An internet blog post about tautology

This is MC Grammar's sister, Bee-Rock.

Bee-Rock is a dancer. She loves hip-hop, jazz, contemporary and ballroom, and any other style of dance you can think of. But she has a problem. Every now and again, somebody utters the phrase 'I saw you dancing that dance last week.'

This phrase is what's known as a tautology. This makes Bee-Rock very annoyed. You see, Bee-Rock has no time for tautology. Sometimes it gets so bad that the only place she feels safe is on the dancefloor. She flees back to it and dances furiously, mascara-stained tears streaming down her face. 'No der I was '"dancing" a "dance"' she screams against the din of music to no one in particular. 'How else you do a dance?'

Tautology is when you say the same thing twice in different words. For example, the tiny little man is a tautology because it's unnecessary to say both 'tiny' and 'little'. Other examples of this are:

I'm going to raze this house to the ground.

When you threaten to raze something, it's pretty much assumed that you're going to raze it all the way to the ground.

The downstairs basement

Basements are always downstairs

One of the most common tautologies is terms like a free gift. This offender tends to come up in many varieties, such as:

A gift of wine on the house

The elephant was donated as a gift

Gifts and donations are always free, so this is where the tautology part comes in.

So do the right thing and try not to use tautologies – as Bee-Rock always says, the time you waste saying unnecessary things is time your could have spent dancing.

Sudden Adjectives: The words that action movies can't do without

MC Grammar loves action movies. All those explosions, high speed car chases, bombs, and even though walking away slowly from an explosion that is right behind you in real life would just be a sign that had been traumatised by violence, there's nothing quite like it when you're watching it in an action movie.

And one of the things I love the most about action movies is their names, like Dragon Eyes, Sudden Death, Street Fighter, Hard Target, Double Target, and Knockaround Guys. All these titles have something in common – they all have adjectives in them.

There's nothing I love more than an adjective-noun action move. When you see one of the these, you know that you're going to get first-class action on your wide-screen TV, and almost definitely the martial art stylings of Jean-Claude Van Damme will be in it.

 The role of adjectives is to give more information about the thing you are talking about. The most common form of an adjective is the attributive adjective. There are difference kinds of adjectives. There are attributive adjectives, meaning that it tells us more about the the main noun or object in a sentence:

It was an interesting animal

An adjective can be predicative, meaning it can be the predicate in a sentence:

This wig is glossy

And adjective can be post-positive, which means that it appears after the noun, like:

There was food aplenty, but it was of the worst kind imaginable

Or an adjective can be substantive, which is when an adjective is used like a noun:

The good, the bad, and the ugly.

A good rule to follow is to avoid using too many adjectives in a sentence. For example, look at this passage from 'New Moon', by Stephanie Meyer:

I woke with a start  – my eyelids popping open wide  – and gasped. Dull, grey light, the familiar light of an overcast morning, took the place of the blinding sun in my dream.

Woah, Stephanie Meyer, slow down there! There's a shitload of adjectives in your story and it's making your story look weird!  

Also, you run the risk of tautology when you use too many adjectives. For example:

The wide open canyon.

Obviously a wide canyon is going to be open.

I was in close proximity to the lion.

All proximity is close.

Good God – where would we be without adjectives! Imagine if some of the greatest movies didn't have adjectives to emphasise their awesomeness? We would have action movies with names like 'Death that is going to happen now', 'More Than One Target' and 'Target that I keep missing'. As this would not do justice to the man that inspires all these movies, Jean-Claude Van Damme. Let's pay homage to him now.