Indicative Mood: What Is It?

The indicative mood is the grammatical mood of a verb used to make statements of facts, express opinions, and ask questions. Learn more about it below.

What Is Indicative Mood?
The indicative mood is a form of a verb used to state facts and opinions, or ask questions.

  • The lamp fell and broke.

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Usual Suspects—Eleven of the Most Common English Mistakes

It’s not news to anyone that the English language can be difficult. The best way to avoid errors is to be fully aware of them. We’ll go over common English grammar mistakes and how to correct them.

A few of the most common mistakes in English are:

  1. Their vs. There vs. They’re
  2. Your vs. You’re
  3. Many vs. Much
  4. Than vs. Then
  5. Affect vs. Effect
  6. Less vs. Fewer
  7. Its vs. It’s
  8. Who’s vs. Whose
  9. If I Was vs. If I Were
  10. Everyday vs. Every Day
  11. To vs. Too

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Understanding Subject-Verb Agreement

Subject-verb agreement is when the subject and verb of a sentence coincide with one another in number (singular or plural) and person (first, second, or third).

The train stops every hour.

The train stop every hour.

The main rule of subject-verb agreement is that singular subjects must be paired with singular verbs and plural subjects with plural verbs, but it isn’t always so clear-cut.

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Count on Us To Teach You the Difference Between Countable and Uncountable Nouns

What do puppies, dinosaurs, giraffes, and donuts have in common?

They’re countable nouns—meaning they can be counted. Their counterparts are uncountable nouns, which, as you may have guessed, are nouns that cannot be counted: happiness, air, water, research, advice, etc.

There’s a bit more to the difference between countable and uncountable nouns, which we’ll examine thoroughly below.

You can also try LanguageTool’s Grammar Checker to make sure you’re using countable and uncountable nouns correctly in your writing.

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A Guide on Writing Dates

Figuring out which date format to use can be tricky. We’ll teach about the different date formats, and how to properly punctuate dates and years.

When writing dates, remember that:
  • Different countries use different formats. While the majority of the world uses day/month/year, the United States uses month/day/year, and some countries in Asia use year/month/day.
  • When using the month/day/year format, commas come after the day and the year in a sentence. If using a long-form date, also place a comma after the day of the week.
    • On Friday, February 11, 2022, I’ll be heading to Mexico.
  • When writing years, do not use an apostrophe unless you’re abbreviating a certain decade.
    • She said that the 1970s were the happiest years of her life.
    • She said that the ’70s were the happiest years of her life.

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A Dashing Lesson on Em Dashes and En Dashes

Em dashes and en dashes look similar, but they have different functions. Here’s how to use them correctly to improve your writing.

Correct Use
    • Em dashes emphasize extra information in a sentence. In many cases, they can replace parentheses, colons, and commas:

Everyone was happy about the company’s change to paid family leavefrom the kids, to the parents, and the grandparents!

    • En dashes represent a range between numbers, dates, and times, and establish a relationship between words and ideas:

From December 6th14th, I’ll be on motherdaughter vacation.

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