Notes

[| Your vs Yours | Better off | Tenses and Moods|]

Your vs Yours

The sentence This is your book can also be written as This book is your book and to make it short it is written as This book is yours. So yours stands for your + thing. When we write yours sincerely or sincerely yours it stands for sincerely your friend or sincerely your mother, etc.

In grammatical terms your is an adjective possessive second person pronoun and yours is a possessive pronoun. In This is your book, your is an adjective pronoun.

The corresponding pairs for other pronouns are: mine-my; ours-our; thine-thy; his-his; hers-her; its-its; theirs-their. Note the his-his and its-its pairs. Things like this create confusion in learning English Grammar from the common usage.

It's me. "me" is an object because it comes after the verb "be".

Better off

better off (in a more fortunate or prosperous condition) "she would have been better off if she had stuck with teaching"; "is better off than his classmate"

It's or its?

It's easy to remember its spelling when you remember that none of the possessive pronouns use apostrophes: his, hers, yours, theirs, ours, and its.

That vs Which

That is used with restrictive clauses and Which is used with nonrestrictive clauses. A nonrestrictive clauses should be always between two commas.

Examples:
The bus, which was red, was going to Sydney. Here "was red" is a nonrestrictive clause, i.e., the sentence makes perfect sense without "was red", hence it's nonrestrictive.
The bus that was in service for six years finally died.

When discussing people rather than things, use who or whom instead of which and that. It's okay to use that to refer to people, but which only works for things.

Who vs Whom

Who is a subject pronoun; it is used as the subject of a verb. Whom is an object pronoun; it is never used as the subject of a verb.

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Bounce ideas off of me or Bounce ideas off each other

Tenses and Moods

Present simple - I do.
Present continuous - I am doing.
Present Perfect - I have done.
Present Perfect continuous - I have been doing.
Past simple - I did.
Past continuous - I was doing.
Past Perfect - I had done.
Past Perfect continuous - I had been doing.
Future simple - I will do.
Future continuous - I will be doing.
Future Perfect - I will have done.
Future Perfect continuous - I will have been doing.
Infinite - I may do, I want to do.
Imperative - do this!
Present indicative - I do.
Present subjunctive - if I do.

Adverb with Verb

After auxiliary verbs (am/are/is/was/were): I am always early for the lecture.
Before other verbs: He always comes early for the lecture.

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Articles?

I am not sure why the following sentences in The $30,000 Bequest - Mark Twain don't have an article.
He was of great stature.
Saladin Foster was bookkeeper in the principal store, and the only high-salaried man of his profession in Lakeside.

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