Be Careful with Verb Forms

Microsoft Office has a new e-mail newsletter for those of us who have Vista and Office 2007. It offers great tips on using the programs, but the second newsletter had a grammar glitch right at the beginning:

This one's about things you can do that you might not have know you can do.

Whoops! If you use the helping verb "have" with the verb "know," it is necessary to use the past participle form of the verb. The principal parts of KNOW are KNOW (present tense),KNEW (past tense), and KNOWN (past participle for use with most helping verbs).

Therefore, the Office 2007 sentence should read as follows:

This one's about things you can do that you might not have known you can do.

Unless you go back and study the linguistic history of modern English, there does not appear to be rhyme or reason to many of the principal parts of verbs (BRING, BROUGHT, BROUGHT but SING, SANG, SUNG or TEACH, TAUGHT, TAUGHT but WRITE, WROTE, WRITTEN.

You just need to learn them. If you have questions about any verb forms, please leave a comment, and I will check them for you.