Monday, 26 October 2015

Useful reference for difficult English language questions

Whilst checking a student's writing, I was intrigued to find out whether grammatically it would be better to say:

1. "Simple ideas can be sometimes the best" or
2. "Simple ideas can sometimes be the best"

As we know, adverbs of frequency come before the main verb, but after the verb 'be' and the auxiliary verb.

As such, in this situation, the correct answer would be: 2. "Simple ideas can sometimes be the best"

However, 'sometimes' can also go at the beginning or end of a sentence, meaning that we could equally write: "Sometimes simple ideas can be the best".

The moral of the story then is that English does not always have a set order in how its sentences are written!

Check out the following webpage for more information:
http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/247921/would-i-say-i-can-sometimes-or-i-sometimes-can

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