Emma studied linguistics and music at Durham University, and she is a qualified teacher. That combination is the reason she writes the grammar and language explainers on this site rather than someone who picked the topic off a keyword list.

Linguistics gives her the framework. Teaching gives her the harder skill, which is explaining a technical idea to somebody who has not met it before and does not yet care about it. Most grammar writing online fails on the second part. It is accurate and unreadable, or readable and quietly wrong.

She is also a Grade 8 pianist and flautist. Musicians tend to make good writers about structure, because both disciplines are ultimately about how small units combine into something that carries meaning, and about what happens to the listener when the rhythm changes.