Last week I looked at how to use the word 'because'. One of my students then asked me to explain the difference between 'because' and 'because of'.
Compare these two sentences:
I stayed at home because the weather was bad.
I stayed at home because of the bad weather.
The important difference is the use of the word 'was' in the first sentence. After 'because', you need a subject and a verb (e.g. the weather was). After 'because of', we don't use a verb, only a noun, nouns or noun phrase.
Hi,Simon.I am not excellent at punctuation.My question is if I write down the sentence like this{Because the weather was bad,I satayed at home}So,the comma here is correct. Isnt.While we dont need commas if I write the sentences as you wrote. Kind regards.
Posted by: ahmed | October 23, 2010 at 11:25
Hi Simon. Thanks so much for the information on your website.Can you please help me on how to answer this question."Parents are going to other countries to work taking their families with them.Do the advantages of this development outweigh the disadvantages?THANK YOU
Posted by: jennet | October 24, 2010 at 07:21
Hi Ahmed,
The use of commas is quite flexible and even causes problems for native speakers. Don't worry too much about commas for IELTS, but correct use of full stops is VERY important.
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Hi Jennet,
I've had a lot of requests to look at different questions, so you might have to wait a while, but I'll try to give some ideas for this topic soon.
Regards
Posted by: Simon | October 24, 2010 at 19:54
When it is a must to use full stop
Posted by: Moka | November 11, 2011 at 22:15
Hi Moka,
For big grammar questions, a short explanation from me will not be enough. Try searching on Google or using a grammar book. Here's an example website that might help:
http://www.informatics.sussex.ac.uk/department/docs/punctuation/node04.html
Posted by: Simon | November 14, 2011 at 10:28
Simon. is it possible to say " I stayed home" instead of I stayed at home? by just omitting the preposition at.
Posted by: Gwapo | December 01, 2011 at 08:29
Hi Gwapo,
Yes, I think Americans say "I stayed home".
Posted by: Simon | December 02, 2011 at 10:04
I appreciate because I could learn a lot of vocabulary, grammar and sentence structure from this blog how to use complex and compound sentence between simple sentence. I can do it properly. For example, The man who is encouraged to learn an international language, must be learnt in some simple ways. This sentence is completely complex, it will be increased to get a good band score in writing parts of IELTS
thank you, simon
Posted by: Md.shahaparan | August 30, 2015 at 15:56