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.
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Can anyone explain why the short forms or the nicknames for Robert and Richard are Bob and Dick?
a) a program that is open source b) an open source program
(b) sounds right because “open source” is in fact a whole adjective. It is neither “open” nor “source”. So the construct in (b) is just like “a blue book”.
However,
a) the machine that is spinning around b) the spinning around machine
Somehow, (b) doesn’t look right for me, because the base adjective is only “spinning”. Is it just my feeling, or is it indeed wrong? If wrong, is there a way to somehow “correct” it?
Thanks a lot.
There wasn’t a clause left in the sole agency contract that wasn’t a source of conflict.
The author of a book I am editing refuses to change the above sentence to: Every clause left in the sole agency contract was a source of conflict.
His reason is this is “a literary device to accentuate [my point]” . I think it is bad English to use the same word twice in one sentence. Am I being pedantic?
When we say, “Don’t mind if I do,” what is the subject we are omitting? Is it:
I don’t mind if I do.
or
You don’t mind if I do.
I read this sentence and I felt kind of weird about it:
The suppliers imposed us to absorb price increase.
I won’t say that it’s wrong to use IMPOSE in that sentence, neither that ABSORB cannot be used like that, but wouldn’t it sound better, and maybe even clearer to use one of the following alternatives? 1. The suppliers forced us to accept price increase. 2. The suppliers made us accept price increase. 3. The suppliers left us no choice but to accept price increase. 4. The suppliers left us no choice but to deal with price increase. 5. The suppliers imposed price increase on us and we were forced to accept it. 6. The suppliers imposed price increase on us and we were forced to deal with it. 7. The suppliers imposed price increase on us and we could do nothing about it.
Any opinion appreciated...
I was wondering if it is alright to use merchandises as a word. I am reading a report where the author uses it frequently, e.g. delivery of merchandises. I think it should be delivery of merchandise rather than merchandises.
My children frequently say they did something, or someone else did something “on accident,” where I would say “by accident.” The “on” version not only sounds wrong to me, but it makes no semantic sense (what about the normal meaning of “on” could make it appropriate here?), but despite my having corrected them many times, they persist in this usage, which suggests it is entrenched in their subculture (Southern California Public Schools). I also came across the “on accident” form on the web recently. Is this idiom taking over? Would anyone care to defend it, or to suggest how it might have originated?
Also, as a college teacher in Southern California I have noticed a construction that might be related in quite a few student essays. This is “study on,” where I would just write “study.” For example: “Galileo studied on astronomy for many years.” Admittedly, this almost always occurs in essays that are poorly written in all sorts of other respects, but it is clearly not a simple mistake, as it occurs quite frequently, sometimes several times in the same paper. Clearly it is done intentionally. (Perhaps it is worth adding that many of my students are Hispanic and bilingual in Spanish and English. Could it be that “study on” reflects some construction or idiom in Spanish? Could that be the case for “on accident” too?)
Let us say I received a box of apples from Joe Jones, Ltd.
Would I write:
“Joe Jones, Ltd., sent a box of apples.” or
“Joes Jones, Ltd. sent a box of apples.”?
Notice that the first example has one more comma.
Thanks!
A coworker and I are arguing over the word “correspondence”. I say it’s already plural, therefore an “s” at the end is unnecessary and incorrect. She says that because she was working on multiple letters, it is “correspondences”.
Who’s right?
I’m getting married and my fiancee (with a Harvard PhD) says that our vows should end as “until death us do part.” My priest (with a PhD equivalent who studied in Rome under the Pope) says that the traditional language is “until death do us part.”
I’m just a Texas Aggie who thinks that perhaps we should use “for as long as we both shall live.”
But just for grins, which of the “until death . . .” phrases is correct? Or are both correct?
