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 I use a colon and a semicolon in the same sentence? Here’s my example, “There were no known friends or family members, so besides his physical symptoms he was admitted with only one certainty: his longstanding IV drug use; he had numerous track marks and was noticeably malnourished.” Is there a better way to structure this?
Why are latin expressions written differently in English and in French? Example: “ne plus ultra” in English is “nec plus ultra” in French.
A TV ad about a food company uses the phrase: I’m loving it! how can I explain the use of the verb ‘I love’ in the Present Continuous? According to the British English Grammar, some verbs such as ‘I love’ have no continuous form.
I never paid this much attention until my dad mentioned today that it’s never sounded right to him when people say “hey” instead of “hi” or “hello”. I’ve been using it this way for at least 20 years, but I looked it up in various dictionaries and haven’t yet found a definition consistent with this usage. Most references just define it as “an interjection used to call attention” or something similar and leave it at that. Any thoughts or references that might shed some light?
Does a phrase exist (english or other) that describes a situation in which something that normally would not occur takes place, solely because the circumstances surrounding it (themselves possible anomolies) make it possible.
Example: A “perfect storm” can take place because wind speeds reach the correct speed at the correct moment, water temperatures are at the right temperature at the correct time, etc., etc.
as dry as a bone as cold as ice as sick as a dog as wet as ??? a fish? water? what’s right?
Both “if” and “whether” can introduce a subordinate clause: “I was wondering if you would come” and “I was wondering whether you would come”. However, the phrase “whether or not”, as in “I was wondering whether or not you would come” is okay, but “if or not” in the same context seems not okay - google searches bring up 100 million hits for the first phrase, but just 15,000 for the second. This came up in a class I was in, and I was surprised because I do use “if or not” in informal speech; why are these two phrases different? In both cases the “or not” is redundant, if you think about it.
I hear this all the time while in a hold queue on the phone, but it sounds like bad English to me. I would prefer “...in the order in which it was received”, although that does sound a little overwrought. I just can’t think of anything better. What do you experts say?
Am I not right in thinking that the phrase “discussion forum”, as often used to refer to bulletin boards on websites, is a tautology?
I recently came across a construction about which I’m unsure, as the construction makes the functions of the individual parts a bit unclear.
The sentence is, “Social players (and even me!) would be interested to know people’s birthdays.”
I contended that the text within the parentheses should be corrected to “(and even I)” considering one would not say “Me would be interested.” However, I was told that, in the above sentence, “and even me” functions like “you and me.”
I don’t see how that applies. Which is the correct construction, and why?
