to talk about things that were true but stopped being true
Example
There used to be a wall here.
Mark used to have a dog but he gave it away.
USE TO
Before we get into idiomatic meanings for the phrase used to, it is worth pointing out that both use
and used can correctly appear before to when to is part of the infinitive of a second verb. That sounds
far more complicated than it is, so let’s go straight to some examples.
USE TO
In these kinds of sentences, whether you decide to write use to or used to will depend on whether the
present or past tense is needed.
Example
What do you use to decorate cakes and cookies?
Quantifiers for indefinite quantities and amounts
Is a word or phrase which is used before a noun to indicate the amount or quantity: 'Some', 'many', 'a
lot of' and 'a few' are examples of quantifiers. Quantifiers can be used with both countable and
uncountable nouns.
Example
There are some books on the desk
How much money have you got?
There is a large quantity of fish in this river.
He's got more friends than his sister.
The real conditional
Conditional type zero is used to talk about general truths, scientific facts or things which always happen
under certain conditions.
If you cross an international date line, the time changes. Phosphorus burns if you expose it to air. If I
wake up early, I go jogging.
Example
The unreal conditional
One action must happen before the other can happen. A remote conditional is used when the likelihood
of something happening is in a distant, imaginary, contrary-to-fact world.
Example
If he had time,
If he felt rested,
Comparison With As..As
We use as + adjective/adverb + as to make comparisons when the things we are comparing are equal
in some way:
Example
It’s not as heavy as I thought it would be, actually.
Rory hasn’t grown as tall as Tommy yet.
She’s not singing as loudly as she can.
Gerunds and Infinitives
After certain verbs
I enjoy singing
After prepositions
I drank a cup of coffee before leaving
As the subject or object of a sentence
Swimming is good exercise
Active voice
The active voice describes a sentence where the subject performs the action stated by the verb. It
follows a clear subject + verb + object construct that's easy to read.