What is the Difference between

A quick way to tease people,or to put yourself one up on anyone else, or put them one down, is to ask them this question. There is a quick answer which is easy, but if the response you get is something about the difference in meaning, they haven't any idea. Whether you tell them the quick answer is a matter of your psychological and moral tactics. If you tell them, they can in turn put themselves one up on everyone else except you. If you don't tell them, you win a reputation for being clever, but lose one for kindness.

The answer is grammatical. Why are so many people obsessed by "grammar"? They often believe that the reason why they can't write well is that when the school was dishing out grammar lessons they must have been suffering from a disease. They missed out. That is nonsense. Equally astonishing is how many people believe they can write better with the help of a few books about grammar. So those selling books, or worse multi-media packs, stick the word "Grammar" in the title.

I believe

1. that almost nobody knows much English grammar, apart from those who have learnt a foreign language and so learnt English grammar by accident. Even those who pretend to know, even those who write beautifully, never making a grammatical mistake, even English teachers, do not know much grammar.

2. that teaching materials with "Grammar" in the title are no help. They are fine in the easy stages when we all get it right, but when they start discussing adverbial phrases, if they ever do, they are lost.

So what is the difference between those two words? The quick answer is that "and" is a conjunction but "also" is an adverb.

Most of those to whom you tell that will go away downcast; it doesn't sound right and doesn't explain much. Nearly everyone knows that "and" is a conjunction and will believe that "also" is the saame thing. So what's the point? What difference does it make to know that short answer? You need the long answer to explain that.

The longer answer has to be something like this. You can join two sentences together with a conjunction without any punctuation. "Apples are square and walking is bad for you" is grammatical. It isn't true, but there is nothing wrong with the grammar.

"Apples are square also walking is bad for you" is ungrammatical; so much so that even if you don't know any grammar you can probably feel it. You may not be able to explain your feelings but you know. You have to stick in either a semicolon (a useful mark) or a real conjunction or both. You can say "Apples are square and also walking is bad for you" (so much for those who say "and also" is redundant); or "Apples are square; also walking is bad for you"; or "Apples are square; and also walking is bad for you."

These alte
ative expressions may not all be equally good, but the differences are matters of style, of personal taste, not of grammar.

Do an experiment. Take any writing nearby, book or letter or whatever you have, and see if you can replace "and" with "also". Sometimes you can, but more often you cannot, even if you do not know why not. That has to be part of the longer explanation of the difference betwee
"and" and "also".

Conjunctions have only one right place in the sentence; adverbs can usually move around to some extent. Most writers know how mobile "however" can be in the sentence. Where you stick it in the sentence is usually a question of style, not a grammatical rule. So that this difference of usage has to be part of the long answer to the difference betwee
"and" and "also". It may also explain why you have to take care in welding sentences together. Readers must know where they are joined. Conjunctions tell them; semicolons tell them; but adverbs like "also", without the support of one of those other signals, do not.

You can teach yourself how to write by reading. Take something that you find easy to read. Then ask yourself why it is easy, and imitate those qualities. Or do the opposite. Take something you find hard to read. Then ask yourself why it is hard, and avoid those attributes.

I don't know much about writing short stories or novels; but I am sure that advice would be good there. I know it is good for business reports and letters.

The qualities may have nothing to do with what you were taught at school. That isn't surprising; at school teachers are trying to help you to write in an adult way, to become an adult. So if you show off long words and sentences you may well get more marks. But if when you are an adult you have to read long words and long sentences, they will probably fail the "what I like reading" test. nnif you read a lot and enjoy it you probably know by instinct as much grammar as you will ever need. If you never have trouble with your car you don't need to know the names of the parts. But if you have trouble with your writing and want to improve it, you may need to learn some grammatical things. Not much, but some. Unfortunately the few grammatical things you must know are not easy: abstract nouns, passive verbs, and the difference betwee
"and" and "also".

John Fletcher

There is a brief biography and photo on my website, www.redraft.com, which is designed to help people write, redraft their writing, and answer grammatical questions. nnnn