My Grammar and I (Or Should That Be 'Me'?): Old-School Ways to Sharpen Your English

B
EING A BIT FANCY
There’s  more  to  grammar  than  knowing  the  difference  between  a  dangling
conjunction, a subordinate object and a non-restrictive apostrophe. (Or whatever.
Sorry, it’s been a long week.) So this chapter rounds up a few other points that
sometimes  cause  bafflement  –  especially  when  you’re  trying  to  decide  which
chapter to put them in.
A
BIG NO-NO
(
OR
, D
OUBLE NEGATIVES
)
‘Ther nas no man nowher so vertuous.’
C
HAUCER
, The Friar’s Tale
*
‘…nor your name is not Master Cesario; nor this is not my nose neither.’
S
HAKESPEARE
, Twelfth Night
Double negatives may not have mattered to Chaucer and Shakespeare, but they
do  matter  in  standard  modern  English.  As  Robert  Lowth
*46
 put  it,  ‘Two
Negatives in English destroy one another, or are equivalent to an Affirmative.’
Rule: two negatives equal a positive and therefore negate each other. If you want
to be negative, use only one.
Sometimes a double negative is obvious –
I did n’t do nothing right
I did n’t never do well in that
– while others are more elusive:
His essay scarcely needs no correction
There is n’t nowhere I’d rather be than here with you.

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They are all equally wrong.
‘How can you possibly have an international agreement that’s effective
unless countries like China and India are not full participants?’