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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Is it correct to describe something as “most unique”? It seems to me that “most” is redunant though it does add emphasis akin to expressions such as “very pregnant” and “very dead”.
In primary school we learned that prisoners were hanged by the neck until dead, and not hung by the neck until dead. Paintings, coats, and Christmas stockings are “hung”, not people. They are “hanged”. Is this correct? I hear news reporters say “hung” all the time. Never “hanged”.
I’ve read a number of books, and when an author uses a colon in a sentence to define something he wrote in simpler terms or to define in a more detailed manner, he capitalizes the next word. Such as, “The blue sky was beautiful: The sky resembled a cascading fall into the bountiful white clouds.” Should I also capitalize the T in “The”?
My boss always says “irregardless” when I believe he should be saying “regardless.” Is irregardless even a word? Since I know what he means and more importantly, since he IS the boss, I refrain from correcting him, but this misusage always makes me cringe. Any insight? I’ll hang up and listen!
Is there any reason for the “that” in the following sentence?
I thought that the day was warm. vs. I thought the day was warm.
How can you put the word “and” 5 times in a row in the same sentence? I need to tell a story. The landlord of a pub called The Pig And Whistle asked a signwriter to make a new sign. When he saw it he thought that the words were too close together so he said to the signwriter “I want more space between Pig and And and And and Whistle”.
A friend asked me, “how many thats can you have in a row?” If a sentence has two thats in it, you could say, “Delete this that, not that that.” (That’s two in a row.) And, he could ask, “Is that that that that you want me to delete?” There’s four, can any more make sense?
Although technically the phrase “hang glide” is two words it seems to be used as one - as in hang gliding.
So what on earth is the past tense of hang glide? Hang glided?
It comes up every now and then and really looks crazy if you dont work around it in some way.
“Home Depot is the store I go to to buy screws”
Is that sentence just completely wrong or completely normal and just looks funny?
Is it regional to use “all of a sudden” versus “all the sudden?” The former sounds more correct to me.
