Discussion Forum
This is a forum to discuss the gray areas of the English language for which you would not find answers easily in dictionaries or other reference books.
Do You Have a Question?
Latest Posts
“I’ve lived many years in Kentucky.”
How comfortable are you with this grammar in writing?
Would you prefer “I’ve lived in Kentucky for many years” ?
Is this just an Americanism?
How widespread is this pattern?
A change that has happened in my lifetime is the use of ‘1800s’, ‘1900s’ and so on. When I was young they referred to the first decade of the century. They would be followed by the ‘1910s’, ‘1920s’ et al. Now they’re used to mean the whole century. I’m not whinging - just noting the changes that happen with the years.
A colleague of mine claimed that you can say “In the long term” instead of “In the long run”. Is that correct?
Could I use both a colon and semicolon in a sentence?
A college will provide help for students who are struggling in homework; the resources are: study skills that help students to be on top of coursework, counselors will give advices dealing with the workload, and the option to drop a class early.
Does this
“The flu is going around. In order to keep from catching it, you should gargle and wash your hands regularly”
Make sense? I’ve never heard. “In order to keep from catching it.” used in a sentence before.
I was in empty space in an elevator one day when it occurred to me that it’s actually “pains-taking”, the taking of pains to do something thoroughly. I’d never thought about it before.
But it’s too hard to pronounce “painz-taking”, because the “z” sound must be voiced; whereas the unvoiced “s” combines easily with the “t” to make “-staking”, so that’s what we say. That’s my theory, but BrE might be different. Is it?
For example, “Every morning, I wake up at 6:00 am and then I make a cup of coffee.”
As a writing teacher for international students, I see this kind of sentence all the time. I know it is technically correct to use a comma before a coordinating conjunction, but I have found that so many Americans omit this comma that it has become extremely commonplace even among native English speakers. Is it socially acceptable in writing to omit the comma? How serious is it to mandate that my international include this comma?
Could you please explain the difference in the following sentences?
1. The instruments used are very reliable.
2. The instruments being used are very reliable.
Are participle 2 “used” and passive participle 1 “being used” interchangeable in this context?
I seem to be pretty fond of the adverb ‘pretty’ used as a modifier, so was rather surprised when one of my young Polish students told me that his teacher at school had said that this use was ‘OK with his mates’ (his words), but inappropriate in the classroom. Looking around I see that this is not an isolated objection, although people didn’t seem to complain about it much before 1900.
Why has this word, much used by eighteenth and nineteenth century writers, writers of prescriptive grammar included, attracted this opposition in more recent times?
