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He went on speaking for two hours.
I can't go on working like this - I'm exhausted.
Go on + to-infinitive means to do the next action, which is
often the next stage in a process:
After introducing her proposal, she went on to
explain the benefits for the company.
John Smith worked in local government for five
years, then went on to become a Member of
Parliament.
Mean:
Mean + gerund expresses what the result of an action will
be, or what will be necessary:
If you take that job in London it will mean travelling
for two hours every day.
We could take the ferry to France, but that will
mean spending a night in a hotel.
Mean + to-infinitive expresses an intention or a plan:
Did you mean to dial this number?
I mean to finish this job by the end of the week!
Sorry - I didn't mean to hurt you.
Stop:
Stop + gerund means to finish an action in progress:
I stopped working for them because the wages were
so low.
Stop tickling me!
Stop + to-infinitive means to interrupt an activity in order
to do something else, so the infinitive is used to express a
purpose:
I stopped to have lunch. (= I was working, or
travelling, and I interrupted what I was doing in order
to eat.)
It's difficult to concentrate on what you are doing if
you have to stop to answer the phone every five
minutes.
Try:
Try + gerund means to experiment with an action that might
be a solution to your problem.
If you have problems sleeping, you could try doing
some yoga before you go to bed, or you could try
drinking some warm milk.
'I can't get in touch with Carl.' 'Have you tried e-
mailing him?'
Try + to-infinitive means to make an effort to do something.
It may be something very difficult or even impossible:
The surgeons tried to save his life but he died on the
operating table.
We'll try to phone at 6 o'clock, but it might be hard
to find a public telephone.
Elephants and mice have to try to live together in
harmony.
The Full PDF Online English Grammar V1.1 © copyright - all rights reserved 1995-2001, Anthony Hughes
The English4Today Members' Website
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ABOUT ANTHONY HUGHES
Author of the Online English Grammar
Anthony Hughes has been involved in education for the past twenty years. He spent his
formative years in Australia and attended the Universities of Sydney (B.A.), New England
(M.Litt) and the University of New South Wales (Cert. TESOL)
After receiving a Masters in English Literature and Language he went on to teach English in
several countries including Australia, Switzerland and France. While in Switzerland he wrote
and directed a six part audio-visual course for English language learners and was the
director of the international education fair 'Mondolingua'.
In 1995 he moved to Bristol in the UK and formed the Digital Education Network Ltd with
David Blackie.
The Digital Education Network (DEN) is now a world leader in the provision of educational
information on the Internet and counts amongst its clients many of the world's top
educational organisations.
Charged with the development of the DEN websites and content and with the development
of educational websites for clients around the world, he has become an expert in the
development and design of high-end, database driven and interactive sites for education.
Along with the technical expertise he has developed content in the form of the Online
English Grammar which currently attracts over 180,000 monthly user sessions on DEN and of
interactive games in the DEN test centre. He is currently working on a number of
multimedia and DV video based projects for primary and secondary schools as well as a
series on the use of English.
In 1999 he formed ZEP Media Ltd to provide an online educational software shop and
resource centre for schools and to act as a 'laboratory' for the development of educational
applications using the new technologies.
Apart from his business activities he has contributed articles and photographs to a number
of magazines, written a screenplay on the life of Friedrich Nietzsche and maintains a strong
interest in the development of creative learning applications using the new technologies.
Professional, publishing and Online Grammar licensing enquiries can be sent to
akh@zepmedia.com
The Full PDF Online English Grammar V1.1 © copyright - all rights reserved 1995-2001, Anthony Hughes
The English4Today Members' Website
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WHICH ENGLISH?
Trash or Rubbish? - Sorting out our English
Colour or color? Socks or sox? Organisations or Organizations?
Underground or subway? Gas or petrol? Fall or Autumn? Candy or
sweets? Cookie or biscuit? Centre or Center, Trash or rubbish?
I often get emails from users berating me for my terrible spelling.
While I admit to a few glaring typos from time to time the emails
are often concerned with spellings that have more to do with
geography than with poor literacy skills.
Just to confuse the issue a little more, I was born in England, went
to Australia when I was five, was entirely educated in Australia,
spent several years in the USA and Canada and then ten years in
France, and now live in England married to a Colombian wife where
the common language at home is French, where my wife speaks
Spanish to the children, I speak English to them and they spend
undue amounts of time listening to American TV shows like Sesame
Street, Buffy the Vampire Killer and the Simpsons or listening to
American rappers, English Spice Girls or, when forced, heroes from
the seventies such as Van Morrison and James Taylor. And they
suck vocabulary, expressions, idioms and grammar out of all of this
and plonk it into their own English. In my home, as in many others
around the world, English isn't something that you can pin down as
you would a prize butterfly and say 'There it is! That is English'.
There is no longer, if there ever was, a standard English to which
all speakers should pay homage. Now we recognise as legitimate
variations American English, Australian English, British English,
Indian English, there is even a variety called Singlish from
Singapore. You only have to have used an electronic spell checker
to know that you can select from some of these English varieties
when correcting your spelling in a word processor.
Although it is true that we have a wonderfully rich global mapping
of English which makes it possible for English speakers to almost
immediately fix a fellow English speaker to a geographical area, it
is also true that there is more that is similar among these English
varieties than is dissimilar. If there wasn't, English speakers from
different parts of the world would have absolutely no hope of
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