Clean Energy Press Releases Provide Opportunities To Teach Grammar
In my position as editor of 2GreenEnergy, I’m on the receiving end of an average of 4 – 5 press releases every day, each explaining some amazing success in clean energy that has happened somewhere on our planet. Today, for instance, I woke up to: Bans Energy Systems (of India) has a rich custom of incredibleness in quality in the offering of its products and services across the nation, whilst…..”
When I tutor kids in English, I often find myself trying to articulate the rule in our grammar regarding making adjectives out of nouns and vice versa. It’s not a piece of cake.
Many English nouns are formed by adding “ness” to the adjectival form, like the Germans add “heit” and the Spaniards add “dad”. But while “cold” becomes “coldness,” “flat” becomes “flatness”, others go different directions; “tall” becomes “height,” not “tallness.” To make matters worse, there are subtle elements to all this. If there actually is a rule, I suppose it’s to try to find a way to make the noun without using “ness,” so as to make the word shorter, not longer. In my book, “graciousness” should be “grace.” “Courteousness” should be “courtesy.”
Having said all this, I normally show courtesy by not emailing back the correction.
“Grace” is very different from “graciousness”. Grace is something you say before meals, unless one uses it like this: “He is a gentleman of grace and polish.” One could use “graceful”, but that would refer to how one walks or seats oneself. Instead of using the “word” “graciousness”, one could say, “The hostess was very gracious.” or, “It is important to be gracious.”.