Raise, rise. Often confused, these verbs have different meanings. “Raise” means to elevate, pick up, or (of children) see through development. “Rise” means to go up or ascend; as an intransitive verb it has no object, while “raise” usually does. Their main forms are “raise, raised, raised” and “rise, rose, risen.”
Ran. See run.
Rang. See ring.
Read, read, read. An irregular verb in its main, past tense, and past participle forms.
Real, really. A common error occurs when the adjective “real” is used for the adverb “really” or to mean “very.” WRONG: “That color is right bright.” BETTER: “That color is very/really bright.”
“Really” and “real” are often overused when an argument or point isn’t very clear or understandable. They then take the place of logic or sense and become crutches for weak thought and expression: “I really think you should join the army.” The example means: I can’t think of any persuasive reasons why you should join, but I’ll try to make my point stronger by inserting a meaningless “really” in the sentence.
In short, the presence of “real” and “really” in your statements is a signal to you and your audience that your thoughts or words bear further attention and probably can’t be trusted or accepted at face value. Avoid “real” and “really” in most cases.
Really. See real.
Reciprocal pronoun. “Each other” and “one another” are reciprocals that single out parts or individuals from a group: “The rats began to attack one another/each other.”
Redundancy. A common weakness of writing is repetition of ideas or words, which is called redundancy. WEAK: “Please be sure to check the results and see that they are correct.” BETTER: “Please be sure to check that the results are correct.” There is no need to repeat the idea of checking in this sentence. If emphasis is wanted, better to change the words, the order of words, or some other aspect of the sentence than just to say the same thing in a slightly different way: “You better be sure you check the accuracy of the results!”
Removing redundancy from writing not only makes your message more direct and clear, it also removes unneeded words and makes it more likely that your audience will follow your thoughts and respond accordingly.
Referent. See antecedent.
Reflexive pronoun. Reflexive pronouns direct action back to the sentence subject. They end in “-self” in the singular and “-selves” in the plural: “herself,” “himself,” “itself,” “myself,” “oneself” (or “one’s self”), “ourselves,” “themselves,” “yourself,” and “yourselves.”
Note that the reflexives are formed from the objective case of the personal pronouns because they always are the object of action reflected back on the subject: “He shot himself.” Thus such constructions as “hisself” or “theyself/ves” are in the wrong case and shouldn’t be used (they actually don’t exist except as colloquial or dialect forms).
Too often reflexives are used when simple objective cases of personal pronouns are enough, particularly when the choice is between “me” and “myself.” Evidently, people think it is less egotistical or more grammatically correct to use “myself” instead of “me.” Or perhaps they are avoiding distinguishing between “/” and “me.” At any rate, such sentences as “She gave it to myself” are grammatically incorrect and should be avoided. “She gave it to me” is just fine.
It is even worse to use “myself” as a subject: “John and myself went to the movies.” Why not “John and I”? Does the “I” sound too assertive? Are people worried that they should be using “me” (wrong because it is not used for sentence subjects)? Whatever the reason, it is simpler, more direct, and clearer just to use the nominative (subjective) case for subjects.
Regardless. Use this word and not “irregardless” which adds a negating prefix to a word that already carries the sense of negation in its ending. In fact, “irregardless” is not a word.
Regular verb. Verbs that follow the normal pattern of conjugation are called “regular.” See also irregular verbs.
Relative pronoun. The pronouns “that,” “what,” “whatever,” “which,” “whichever,” “who,” and “whoever” link dependent clauses to sentences and suggest a relationship between the clause and the main statement.
Relative pronouns operate quite straightforwardly in sentences and clauses: “The lion is the biggest cat that lives in Africa.” “Smithers is the hunter who shot a lion.” “Kunga is a lion who eats whomever it can find.” The relative pronouns change case (and sometimes form), depending on how they are used in their clauses. Thus “who” is the subject twice in the example sentences, while “whomever” is the object of “finds.”
Agreement of relative pronoun subjects and their verbs or other pronouns that refer to them also follows expected rules and patterns. However, take care with the combination of “one” and “who.” It is sometimes tricky to tell whether the “who” following a “one” refers to a singular or plural antecedent. The verb that follows “who” needs to be in the correct number in these instances, of course, so the antecedent must be checked: “Appleton is the one who baked the bread.” “Who” is singular because Apple-ton is only one person. But “Appleton is one of those who bake bread.” Here “who” refers to “those”—the many people who bake bread—and therefore the verb is plural. Many sentences are not so obvious as these examples, and errors in agreement between “who” and a verb are common.
Repetition. One device of persuasion or emphasis is repetition—using the same word, phrase, clause, order of words, sentence structure, voice, mood, or other feature of writing more than once to make a point or call attention to something.
If you choose to employ repetition in your writing, take care to maintain some degree of consistency or parallelism among repeated elements so that your audience can easily recognize them. However, repeating a simple sentence structure like a noun followed by a verb or adjective can dispel all the rhetorical force built up by repetition.
Restrictive clause. Clauses that add vital information to sentences are called “restrictive.” They appear wherever the writer chooses in a sentence and are not set off by commas, as are nonrestrictive clauses, which are so marked to indicate that the information they contribute to a sentence is less critical.
Restrictive clauses are most commonly introduced by relative pronouns and demonstrative pronouns: “Sally is the person who is in charge. She has the plan that will be put into effect.” In the example sentences, “who” and “that” introduce the restrictive clauses. It is clear that they are restrictive because the sentences would not be complete or convey the same idea without them. Compare: “Sally, who works in development, is in charge. She has a plan, which will be put into effect, that calls for automation.” “Who” again introduces the same clause, but it is now nonrestrictive—if it is removed from the sentence, we still will get the main point: Sally is in charge. In the second example sentence “which” is now used to introduce the “will be put into effect” clause because it is now nonrestrictive—the point is about automation, not that the plan will be activated. Note that the nonrestrictive clauses created in the latter two examples are set off by commas.
Errors common with these two kinds of clauses include adding commas before restrictive clauses, using “which” for “that,” and not setting off nonrestrictive clauses with commas.
Restrictive phrase. Like restrictive clauses, restrictive phrases have some rules associated with them. They are not set off by commas, and they need to be clearly associated with the thing or person to which they refer—their antecedent. See the entry for nonrestrictive phrases for more information, examples, and rules.
Use the same method to determine if a phrase is restrictive or nonrestrictive as was suggested for restrictive and non-restrictive clauses: consider whether the sentence without the phrase is complete and means the same as with it. If the sentence makes it main point without the phrase, then the phrase is nonrestrictive. If the sentence needs the phrase to convey its message, then the phrase is restrictive. Restrictive: “The hiker saw the mountain goat standing on the hill.” The sentence intends to identify the mountain goat as specifically the one on the hill, not any other. Nonrestrictive: “Standing on the hill, the hiker saw the mountain goat.” The sentence is about seeing the mountain goat, and the information about where the hiker is standing is less important.
If a comma appeared in the first example before “standing,” one of the most common grammatical errors would be apparent—a misplaced modifier. That is, the comma would have made it unclear whether the hiker or the mountain goat was standing on the hill. The second example cannot be misconstrued—it is the hiker on the hill. These examples show, in a modest way, that it is important to punctuate sentences with phrases with care so that the relationship between the phrase and the word it refers to is quite clear. Another way to ensure clarity of connection between phrase and antecedent is to position the phrase so that there can be no misunderstanding about what it refers to and whether it is restrictive or nonrestrictive.
Revision. The vital process of reviewing and rewriting to eliminate errors, unclear passages, inefficient communication, and poorly chosen phrases or vocabulary is called revision. The previous long sentence could probably use some revision. See editing.
Rhetoric. In the most basic sense, rhetoric is the art of persuasion. During the long history of the practice of this art, certain kinds of sentences, phrases, clauses, paragraphs, and other grammatical elements were identified as more effective persuaders or conveyers of information than other forms, at least in certain circumstances. Rhetoric, then, is the art of making choices among words, sentences, structures, and so on in order to communicate or express oneself most effectively.
While grammar has rather hard-and-fast rules to follow, rhetoric has accumulated experience to suggest devices, methods, and patterns of writing or speaking to good effect. Put another way, grammar tells us how to write or speak correctly and clearly, while rhetoric helps us do so forcefully, persuasively, and effectively. There is not space or reason to recite the points of rhetorical practice here, except to say that rhetoric—the strength and efficacy of communicating—merits careful thought and attention, along with the accuracy and correctness of speech or writing (grammar). See the entries on style, variety, parallelism, repetition, and the like.
Rhetorical question. Questions to which a writer or speaker does not expect answers are called “rhetorical”: “Isn’t that the worst thing you ever saw?” This “question” is asked not to find out what anyone thinks about the “thing” but to make the point that the speaker or writer believes it to be quite bad.
Rhetorical questions are a tried-and-true stylistic device, tried so often that they have become somewhat clichéd. Don’t use too many of them, and try not to use them if there is any chance that a negative response will follow and leave you without an audience. See cliché and style.
Ridden. See ride.
Ride, rode, ridden. An irregular verb in its main, past tense, and past participle forms.
Ring, rang, rung. An irregular verb in its main, past tense, and past participle forms.
Rise, rose, risen. An irregular verb in its main, past tense, and past participle forms. See also raise.
Risen. See rise.
Rode. See ride.
Roman. Type that appears in the form most commonly seen in printed matter is called “Roman” for historical reasons. Type that appears slanted is called italic, as in the word before the comma.
Root. See main form.
Rose. See rise.
Rules. Grammar sets and records the rules that govern how words are put together for maximum clarity and correctness of expression. Like all rules, grammar rules can be broken for a reason; today, grammar rules are more often violated for good and bad reasons than ever before. Rule breaking can be exhilarating in itself, which is probably reason enough to do it sometimes. But since communicating serves not only the self but others in an audience meant to comprehend what is said, too much of a fun thing can subvert one’s communicative intent. Too much or arbitrary rule breaking can sever the tenuous bond between audience and writer or speaker, leading to confusion.
If you know the rules of grammar and apply them in most of what you say or write, then judicious violations of rules can be used successfully to emphasize points, to paint vivid pictures in or of colloquial or dialect language or speakers, or to draw energy into language by playing against the rigidity of rules. But this must be done with care, and it happens most profitably when the rule breaker knows well what rules are being violated and why. In short, the careful, conscious, conscientious writer will be heard better than the sloppy, thoughtless person who thinks grammar rules are unimportant. See emphasis.
Run, ran, run. An irregular verb in its main, past tense, and past participle forms.
Rung. See ring.
Run-ons. Sentences that include too many clauses or phrases are said to run on: “The chauffeur parked the limousine, and the passenger went into the restaurant, while a waiter talked to the host, who was standing next to the door that still showed scars from the fire that happened over the last weekend before Christmas.” The example makes obvious the fault of such sentences and the ordeal they represent for readers or listeners.
The answer to most run-ons is to break them up into smaller pieces, tying together with conjunctions or through other constructions only those things that are fairly closely related to one another: “The chauffeur parked the limousine, and the passenger went into the restaurant. Meanwhile, the waiter talked to the host. She was standing next to the door, which still showed scars from the fire that happened over the last weekend before Christmas.” Other divisions of the initial example are possible, of course, depending on the point being made. And it is likely that many of the words and ideas in the example could be dropped without loosing the main thrust of the sentences. Run-ons usually pile too much together and signal failure to think out what needs to be said, how to say it, and whether the way it has been said needs revision or rethinking.
Don’t burden readers or listeners with your failure to decide what you want to say or how to say it.
Russian. The most widespread of the Slavic languages (which include Ukrainian, Polish, Czech, Slovak, and Croatian), Russian uses a different alphabet than English. Therefore, it can be represented in various ways in English. Which system of transliteration you choose will depend on your audience and the standards applied where and when you write. You should consult a Russian grammar, dictionary, or style book for further guidance on capitalization, punctuation, and other aspects of the language and its transliterated versions. See languages.