In this second article on enhancing English skills using The Art of The Alternative, the focus is on punctuation and using different parts of speech when communicating.

* When writing, it is usual for most people to limit their use of ‘’full stops’’ by writing very long sentences and also to rarely use commas to indicate pauses.

Compare:
Hiking through the national park Joseph Greta Guy and Joanna became separated in the thick forest and it took the park rangers Mike and his partner Trevor more than five hours to locate them because each hiker had decided to try to find their own way back to their camp by going in four different directions and soon became completely lost as the longer they walked the farther they ventured away from safety.

With:
Hiking through the national park, Joseph, Greta, Guy and Joanna became separated in the thick forest. It took the park rangers, Mike and his partner, Trevor, more than five hours to locate them. This was because each hiker had decided to try to find their own way back to their camp by going in four different directions. They became completely lost as the longer they walked, the farther they ventured away from safety.

Text can be made easier to understand and a passage can be even more interesting when shorter sentences are intermittently used. Commas can greatly add to the clarity of a construction.

* An alternative approach that also can make text more interesting and often much clearer, is to use dashes and semi-colons instead of commas and by applying the ellipsis when listing a series of words.

Compare:
Catherine Mendosa, the dux of her college, is keen to study physics, chemistry, mathematics, computer technology and geometry at university but cannot decide whether she wants to be a secondary school teacher, an environmental scientist, a mathematics lecturer, a dental technician or an orthodontist, a general medical practitioner or a physiotherapist or something else.

With:
Catherine Mendosa - the dux of her college - is keen to study physics, chemistry, mathematic, computer technology and geometry at university but cannot decide whether she wants to be a secondary school teacher; an environmental scientist; a mathematics lecturer; a dental technician; or an orthodontist; a general medical practitioner; a physiotherapist or ...

* Different shaped parenthesis and crackets can also be used for effect and variation.

Compare:
Every member of the squad, as well as the coach, Brian Hayes, and the club’s board members, believe that their training facilities are the best in the competition.

With:
Every member of the squad (as well as the coach [Brian Hayes] and the club’s board members) believe that their training facilities are the best in the competition.

Using words as alternative parts of speech

An important characteristic of English to understand is that most words can be used as different parts of speech and have more than one meaning. Learners need to develop knowledge of the alternative, grammatical uses of words. Knowing the various meanings of words is a pre-requisite to using them as superior alternatives to other words.

While a few words are single lexical units or lexemes such as pneumonia and penicillin that have only one meaning each that never changes regardless of the context in which they are used, hundreds of thousands of words represent at least two or more lexemes. Many, also, can be different parts of apeech — with different meanings — depending on their function in a sentence.

For example, “case”.

As a verb, “case” can mean to “ carefully survey” or “look over” some particular thing , e.g. - Professional thieves always case a place before they attempt to rob it.

As an adjective, it is used to mean “a record”, e.g. - My doctor keeps a case history on every patient.
Or metallically, its meaning changes again, e.g. That steel lid was case-hardened.

As a Noun, “case” has many as 10 different meanings, e.g.

1. A container. The miser hid his money in a metal case under his bed.

2. A statement of facts. The prosecution had a strong case against the dishonest manager.

3. An instance of a disease. He died after suffering from a serious case of blood poisoning. That is the sixth case of pneumonia in the village in the last week.

4. An event or circumstance. His failure to pass the test was another case of not studying.

5. An actual situation. What the witness said happened was not the case.

6. A peculiar or unusual person. My neighbour is a real case when it comes to politics.

7. Grammatically, “case” is a category of nouns and pronouns that defines their relationship with other words in a sentence, e.g. nominative case and objective case.

It is also the term used to define how alphabetical symbols are written
as either upper case or lower case.

8. Colloquially, it can mean “a problem”. Don’t worry, I am on your case too and we will solve it together.

Colloquially, “case’’ can also have the broader meaning of “personal life” or “private situation,’’ e.g. Please get off my case. I can look after myself.

Consider the words: chair, farm, fish, light, lunch, mouth, school, table, target, test, walk. Test yourself
to see if you can think of how they can be used as different parts of speech.