Problems often arise for writers, particularly journalists, when dealing with the third person pronoun. These days, it isn't acceptable to use the word 'his' to mean both his and hers so there is always the thorny problem of which of the alternatives is appropriate.Your proofreader will either need to know your preference or may ask for your preference so be prepared.

Many use 'his/her' or 'his or her' instead, which is perfectly acceptable although it can look a little clumsy and is irritating if it is repeated throughout the writing, repetition makes writing boring. Others will re-write a sentence to avoid the need for the third person pronoun entirely, but that can look a little false. A third alternative is to pluralise the pronoun to 'their', but that brings its own problems.To use their is very much a compromise and often will make a sentence grammatically incorrect.

A further example of this is the extremely popular contraction of the word chairman to chair or alteration to 'chairperson' in order to avoid the connotations that it is always a male in charge.

Why Star Trek? Put simply, the opening words illustrate perfectly the concept of the split infinitive.

A split infinitive is the situation where an adverb or toher word is inserted between the to and the verb which creates the infinitive; on Star Trek, they say 'to boldly go' whereas it should really be 'to go boldly' as good grammar dictates that an infinitive stays intact. However, whether the infinitive is split or not, it is still completely understandable.

The notion of an unsplit infinitive perhaps harks back to Latin, where there is no 'to' with a verb therefore rendering it unsplittable.

The jury is out on the split infinitive, traditionalists would say never split your infinitives, however, more modern grammaticians would say that it is fine to do so should the occasion require it. Sometimes, using an unsplit infinitive makes it impossible to say what you want to say, without a lot of further explanation. At other times, it is a matter of style, sometimes a split infinitive looks and sounds better than an unsplit infinitive.

So Captian Kirk and crew, it is perfectly acceptable in modern English to continue to boldly go wherever it is you are heading!

Semicolon or comma? This can be a sticky question to resolve but here are some tips that we hope might help you to decide.

Love it or hate it, the semicolon is here to stay. George Orwell hated the semicolon so much that he refused to use it in one of his books - coming up for air, written in the year that the second world war broke out, does not have a single semicolon. George Bernard Shaw despaired of Lawrence, who used colons, commas and full stops but hardly ever a semicolon.

So how should it be used?

It can be used as a join, it represents a pause somewhere between a comma and a full stop. If you find that you have written a gramattically correct long sentence, stretching over multiple lines, a proofreader might suggest that it be split into smaller sentences. Smaller sentences make the written word more readable. However, you as a writer have the last word and should you decide that a long sentence is about a single subject and you want it to remain as one long sentence, you can use semicolons instead of full stops. Thus grammar, your proofreader, you and the reader are catered for. This also would apply to long sentences suffering from a plethora of commas to separate clauses; swapping some for semicolons keeps the effect but is easier on the eye and potentially less confusing for your readers.

In some sentences, it is necessary to present the reader with a list. Normally, list items are separated by commas, however, with complex lists, a comma may be found within a listed item; the semicolon can then be used to impart a greater clarity.

A semicolon is also required both grammatically and rhetorically before adverbs. When using words such as moreover, nevertheless, however, consequently and so on, adverbs that imply some sort of reflection about the following idea, a semicolon before them is often needed in place of a comma.

Good luck!

Homophones are words that sound the same but are spelled differently to one another. Sadly, there are a lot of people who cannot tell the difference between them which makes their work look a bit strange when presented to someone with a reasonable knowledge of the language. Some of the most common homophones in English are:

to and too - most often seen with the 'to' version where 'too' is correct for example 'to much'

their and there - very odd to see 'there house'

Your and you're - perfect example of the misuse (or missing) an apostrophe

Homophones can also lead to misunderstanding between versions of English, for example 'butt' in the UK has a very different meaning to the same word in American.

So you need to be aware of a wide variety of homophones for writing in a single version of English as well as being aware of homophones between versions of English.