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Sunday, 31 July 2011

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 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


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.

Monday, 18 July 2011

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: