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Time of India
2 days ago
- General
- Time of India
Grammar holding you back? Master these 10 powerful techniques to improve your English
For many, grammar is a relic of classroom instruction, tamed once, forgotten soon after. But for professionals, writers, and global communicators, grammar is not merely a rulebook; it is architecture. It lends form to meaning, clarity to complexity, and power to persuasion. In a world increasingly driven by the written word—emails, applications, social media, academic discourse, flawless grammar is not a luxury. It's currency. Yet, despite decades of exposure, even native speakers falter. Why? Because mastering grammar requires more than memorising rules. It demands nuance, context, and constant refinement. If you seek not just functional fluency, but grammatical excellence, this high-level, nontraditional guide offers a blueprint for elevating your command of English. Treat grammar as a symphony, not a checklist Think of grammar not as a set of traffic rules but as orchestration. Subject-verb agreement, tense continuity, and punctuation are your instruments. Mastering them is not about ticking boxes but about orchestrating flow. Good grammar should sound right. Reading your writing aloud activates this musicality and alerts you to awkward phrasing, misplaced modifiers, and rhythm-disrupting structures. Interrogate every sentence you write Adopt the habit of grammatical self-inquiry. Ask: Is my subject clear and precise? Does the verb tense match the intended timeline? Is my punctuation guiding or confusing the reader? Every sentence is an opportunity to refine logic and tone. This deliberate interrogation cultivates internal grammar instinct, a skill that artificial intelligence, autocorrect, or Grammarly cannot replace. Master the grammar of tone, not just the grammar of rules Advanced grammar is less about avoiding errors and more about wielding language strategically. Want to sound formal? Use the passive voice selectively. Need to command attention? Deploy imperative constructions. Trying to soften the critique? Embrace modal verbs ('might,' 'could,' 'would') with finesse. Grammar can be a scalpel or a sledgehammer, choose based on context. Beware of false fluency: Avoid overcorrecting Paradoxically, some of the worst grammar mistakes arise from trying to sound too correct. Misusing 'whom' where 'who' suffices, or obsessively avoiding sentence fragments even when stylistically warranted, can result in stilted prose. True grammar mastery involves knowing when and why, to break the rules without breaking meaning. Read like a grammarian, not just a reader Immersion is key, but passive reading yields little. Analyse the grammar behind the magic. Why did the author use a colon here instead of a dash? How does this compound-complex sentence maintain balance without confusing the reader? Study a variety of genres, legal documents for precision, novels for stylistic devices, and journalism for clarity. Each teaches a distinct grammatical dialect. Conjugation is your compass, keep it polished Verb conjugation is the lifeblood of grammar. Master not only standard forms but also subjunctive moods ('If I were you…'), conditionals ('Had she known…'), and perfect tenses ('I have been writing for hours'). Precision in conjugation prevents ambiguity and showcases a mature grasp of temporal logic. Wield punctuation with surgical precision Advanced grammar includes punctuation that does more than pause, it punctuates meaning. Use em dashes to inject emphasis, colons to herald lists or revelations, and semicolons to link complex ideas. Avoid comma splices like grammatical landmines. Remember: punctuation is not decoration, it is navigation. Embrace feedback as a grammar gymnasium One of the fastest paths to improvement is external critique. Ask editors, mentors, or even advanced AI tools to analyse your writing. Don't just correct errors, understand them. Keep a personal log of recurring mistakes and revisit them periodically. Pattern recognition breeds progress. Translate complex thoughts into grammatical simplicity Great grammar isn't about complexity; it's about clarity. The ability to express dense ideas in grammatically simple, elegant sentences is a hallmark of linguistic sophistication. Einstein famously said, 'If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.' Grammar is the conduit for that simplicity. Practice in context, not isolation Forget fill-in-the-blank drills. Instead, rewrite flawed articles, edit sample essays, or translate nuanced ideas from your native tongue into polished English. Contextual practice trains your grammar to serve meaning, not the other way around. Language is not a code to decipher, but a muscle to condition. Is your child ready for the careers of tomorrow? Enroll now and take advantage of our early bird offer! Spaces are limited.
Daily Maverick
5 days ago
- General
- Daily Maverick
Embracing imperfection: Why I choose authentic errors over AI's polished prose
I want to delete Grammarly and other AI editing software. Because I want to make the same old and authentic syntax errors. I want to write with grammatical mistakes and spelling errors, because there is something very sexy and original about that. I want to stop using platforms that impose prefabricated styles, that insist on front matter and formatting before truth, that demand cover pages as if meaning needs a passport. These are bureaucratic standards rooted in Euro-American notions of order, hierarchy and tidiness. They do not understand my Bantu education context. They cannot interpret my African oral tradition metaphors and Inanda proverbs. They want to universalise thought and smooth over difference with bias. Because writing in English is itself a struggle and a triumph. Full stop. My stylistic mistakes represent writing back to the Empire. Writing to my own audience, who understand both the meaning and the context of what I say. My grammatical mistakes are not accidents. They are resistance. They are freedom. Full stop. Writing with invention Every so-called syntax error Africans make is Shakespearean. It is writing with invention, bending language into meaning. And yes, we interchange past and present, call he she, and arrive at a point in a roundabout way. Because our lives are circular. Our stories spiral. Our logic loops back. We always return to where we started, no matter how long the journey takes. Like rondavels. Like amaziyoni, round and round. This reality does not fit the templates of the Empire. That is why our Bantu education English is marked with red and blue lines, suggesting changes that must be made. They are not corrections, actually. They are borders we must refuse to respect. Microsoft Editor doesn't understand this spiral. It treats my detours as mistakes and my emphasis as overreach. It flags sentences that carry emotional weight, asking me to 'clarify' what is already felt deeply. But our writing is not always for clarity. Sometimes it is for echo. For memory. For return. Grammar and AI proofreading platforms are part of an epistemicide. They dictate how we think, what we say and how we conclude meaning. They tell us to break paragraphs that carry too much emotion. They whisper: 'Too many ideas in one sentence.' But what if our thinking is braided? What if our logic spirals like praise poetry? Do you think Mazisi Kunene's epic would have made it through these softwares that dislike our metaphors and flag our proverbs? These things want our stories boiled and trimmed, polite and universal. These tools are like an excited first-time supervisor — insecure in his authority — imposing his will over students, mistaking dominance for mentorship. QuillBot is even more dangerous. It does not just suggest, it rewrites. It paraphrases away the soul of the sentence. It swaps out rhythm for neatness, fire for flatness. It does not understand that when we say: 'I am going to borrow you money,' we are not being incorrect. We are being intimate, local, rooted. QuillBot wants fluency, but not flavour. It wants output, not voice. Their proofreading is ideological Their proofreading is not just technical. It is ideological. It trims dissent. It disarms memory. It says: 'Consider softening your tone,' as if we are too sharp, too raw, too untrained in their image. But we were trained differently. Our street education was cracked but full of soul. Using Grammarly is like asking a colonial governor to edit your liberation song. He will suggest changing 'freedom' to 'civil order'. Microsoft Editor will break your verses into neat administrative bullet points. And QuillBot may reword your pain into a LinkedIn update. They may delete the drumbeat altogether. These platforms are a free pass to newspaper sub-editors — they simply copy, cut (for length) and paste. So bring back my Bantu education English. Bring back the crooked tenses and the double negatives that know what they mean. Return my split infinitives, my hyperbole, my outrage. Bring back the brokenness that speaks whole truths of my background. I do not need correction. I need patience. My language does not need fixing. It needs listening. I quit proofreading software. I return to my Bantu Education English. Its structure may not be polished, but its meaning glitters. PS: Busani Ngcaweni grew up at Inanda. At the local Gingqimboza Primary School, his English teacher never came to class — she was doing life, getting married and having babies. At Ohlange High, his English teacher from Phoenix only taught novels, asked girls to sign Whitney Houston and practised yoga, not a single grammar lesson per curriculum requirement. DM
Time Business News
5 days ago
- Science
- Time Business News
Top 5 Research Paper Writing Tools and Resources
Writing a research study was really a hard nut to crack back in the days when there were no tools to proofread and generate citations automatically. But now AI has shifted the whole paradigm from formulating research topics to getting the content free from grammatical errors. To make your research paper writing easy, we have found some very useful tools and resources that you can use to speed up the process and craft a perfect study free from discrepancies. Make sure to employ AI-based tools in your work routine and start getting things done in minutes that took hours previously. You need to start by finding the right topic that needs to be discussed in the research world, and then move on to finding relevant sources to measure feasibility for literature review writing. After that, write a strong thesis statement and focus on creating a detailed outline guiding you through the whole study. Once you are done with the above-mentioned steps, it's time to start drafting the research paper and citing the marked sources using the required MLA, APA, Chicago, etc style to meet publication standards. Lastly, proofread and edit the manuscript, and boom, you are ready to publish. The whole process will take a lot of time, but if you are using the right tools, as mentioned below, then you can get the work done correctly in no time. Here are the best 5 platforms that can help you write a well-researched paper worthy of being published in top-ranking journals. ChatGPT – Brainstorming Ideas Every seasoned scholar is using ChatGPT to find unique ideas and even get a research proposal. What's stopping you from using this AI assistant from ideation to creation, leading to drafting a solid outline? It can assist you in brainstorming ideas and simplifying complex information into easy-to-understand research questions to be answered. Bonus Tip: Input your personal notes into it and ask to develop sections of a research paper based on the data to get a personalised response. Perplexity – Finding References Stop using Google to find relevant articles or books to mention in your research study because you don't have 100 years to write a single paper. Try using Perplexity to get a list of relevant research articles, books, blogs, and even dissertations with their published links. It can make your reference search fun by giving exact answers within seconds. Bonus Tip: Simply paste your research questions in the search bar to get relevant references in a chronological order to add in your prose. Grammarly – Improving Grammar Every researcher works like a robot when a sea of arguments is flowing in their head because they don't want to miss the important ideas popping into their head. In this pursuit, a lot of grammatical or even syntactic mistakes are being made unconsciously by the researchers that need to be corrected before publishing. Grammarly can be a quick fix for your mistakes by making the content error-free within seconds using the advanced AI algorithms. Bonus Tip: Don't accept the 'our best version' suggestions of Grammarly to maintain the human touch in your paper. Zotero – Managing References Managing references manually is really a tedious task unless you have a platform like Zotero, which is absolutely free to use. It enables students to save references from browsers, organise them in folders and with tags, and create bibliographies with the right style. What else do you need to manage your bibliography or list of references automatically? Bonus Tip: If you are working with co-authors, then you can create a shared library using Zotero to manage references collaboratively. – Proofreading Content Publishing a paper without proofreading and editing content to remove style and tone inconsistencies is not a smart decision. That's why tools like can help you maintain discipline-specific style and eliminate grammatical mistakes in academic and technical writing to ensure approval without facing objections. Bonus Tip: Make sure to pass your paper manuscript from after completing it to avoid disturbing the workflow and meet publication standards. Only use the above-mentioned tools and resources to improve your research paper writing, not to get the whole work done from them. Never let your critical thinking and writing skills be replaced by AI algorithms to maintain originality in your work. Remember, tools are for your assistance, not to replace you in the research world. TIME BUSINESS NEWS
Finextra
5 days ago
- Business
- Finextra
Gr4vy to rewire payments for Grammarly
Gr4vy, the cloud-based payment orchestration platform, today announced that Grammarly, the trusted AI assistant for communication and productivity used by over 40 million people and 50,000 organizations, has chosen the company's no-code cloud system to create bespoke checkout experiences for its millions of users. 0 Grammarly needed a solution that would allow it to optimize its payment performance by integrating multiple payment service providers (PSPs) without the complexity of direct integrations—an effort that would otherwise require extensive development resources and ongoing maintenance. Gr4vy enables Grammarly to experiment with different PSPs effortlessly while also improving efficiency, reducing transaction costs, and increasing approval rates. Through Gr4vy's single integration, Grammarly now has access to over 400 payment providers, eliminating the need for custom-built PSP connections. Gr4vy's plug-and-play, no-code platform allows Grammarly to activate new PSPs with a single click, eliminating months of engineering work and significantly speeding up time to market. Additionally, Gr4vy ensures redundancy and reliability—if one PSP experiences downtime, transactions are rerouted instantly, preventing disruptions and revenue loss. 'Grammarly's decision to use our platform is a testament to the simplicity and flexibility we offer, as well as our ability to deliver efficient and scalable solutions that will drive customer growth and retention,' said John Lunn, Founder and CEO of Gr4vy. 'We are thrilled to empower Grammarly with the flexibility it needs to optimize payment processes while focusing on its core mission of helping people and teams do their best work.' Grammarly leverages several key features of Gr4vy's platform to improve its payment operations. With Gr4vy's hosted payment fields, Grammarly can securely collect sensitive card data, ensuring full PCI compliance. In addition, Grammarly uses Gr4vy's Account Updater to handle recurring billing transactions efficiently, automating the management of expired cards and ensuring uninterrupted subscription management. These features allow Grammarly to continuously refine and experiment with its payment strategy while maintaining the agility and scalability needed to support its growing operations Gr4vy continues to redefine the payment landscape by enabling businesses like Grammarly to take full control of their payment strategies. With a flexible, scalable, and future-proof infrastructure, the platform helps companies boost profitability, streamline operations, and explore new payment experiences—without the constraints of legacy systems. As Gr4vy expands its global reach, it remains focused on providing businesses with the tools they need to succeed in an evolving payments ecosystem. Committed to progress, the company helps industry leaders unlock their full potential and shape the future of payments.
Independent Singapore
5 days ago
- Business
- Independent Singapore
Microsoft Power Apps, Grammarly, and ChatGPT are the most used genAI tools in Singapore workplaces
Photo: Freepik/frimufilms SINGAPORE: Microsoft Power Apps, Grammarly, and OpenAI's ChatGPT are Singapore workplaces' most commonly used generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools, according to The State of Generative AI in 2025 report of Palo Alto Networks. Singapore Business Review, citing the report, said the tools are being used by enterprises to handle everything from automation to content creation and communication, with Microsoft Power Apps leading at 36.83%, followed by Grammarly at 27.23% and ChatGPT at 20.95%. In 2024, the use of generative AI globally surged by 890%, with organisations using 66 different generative AI apps on average. However, 10% of these were marked as high-risk. In the city-state, one of the main concerns was the use of 'shadow AI', which the report described as the 'unauthorised use of AI tools by employees without IT knowledge or approval', creating 'heightened risk', especially for industries dealing with sensitive data or critical infrastructure. According to Palo Alto Networks' press release, 'While GenAI unlocks innovation and accelerates competition, the proliferation of unauthorised AI tools is exposing organisations to greater risk of data leakage, compliance failures and security challenges. It is imperative not to let the speed of innovation outpace your safeguards.' 'To harness the full potential of GenAI while mitigating its risks, prioritising strong data controls, access management and ongoing employee training is crucial for laying the foundation for secure GenAI adoption,' it added. Still, Singapore remains one of the leading countries in digital governance. The city-state was among the first to launch a Model AI Governance Framework, which has been updated to address challenges related to generative AI. Its National AI Strategy 2.0 also aims to support responsible innovation while maintaining public trust and data integrity. /TISG Read also: 'Equity', 'ETF', and 'GDP' are the top financial terms Singaporeans don't understand
