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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A sentence such as, “The Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra entertained a crowd of over 500 Saturday evening,” makes perfect grammatical sense in American English, and the construction is commonplace in newspapers. An alternative would be: “...crowd of over 500 on Saturday evening.” (addition of “on”)
Since I am British-Canadian, and am doing copy for local press now, I have to be careful to use British English consistently, and I am unsure whether the former construction is standard British English. Certainly the latter is.
Any opinions?
I’m wondering if George Lucas just made this word up. I found that sith was from the celtic word “sidhe” meaning “fairy, especially one that conjures dead spirits.”
It seems really random that Sith would mean something and that Jedi would be meaningless.
Could you please tell me which sentence is correct? “I am sorry for not bringing your package yet or I am sorry I have not brought your package yet”. Thank you in advance.
When you replace the first two numbers of a year with an apostrophe (or single quote), do you use a left or right curly quote? Would it be ‘05 or ’05? I have found it both ways online, even both ways in the same paragraph.
(Bob Rusk and Tina Rusk are a married couple and have the same advisor)
Which is correct:
Bob and Tina Rusk’s advisor suggests... or Bob and Tina Rusks’ advisor suggests...
Is there someplace I can find the rule that dictates this? (I need to present proof to settle an argument)
Thank You, Gregg Nagel
New to this blog, I read back a few days and discovered the entry on you all, in which some commentators maintained that you by itself does satisfactory service as a plural. But consider the following: Person walks into a bar, says “hi, y’all” to everyone there. This utterance would be recognized as perfectly grammatical and ordinary by any native speaker of red-state English. Is there any variety of English where “hi, you” could be taken as a greeting to everyone?
I would like to know if you could tell me where the apostrophe “s” would go in the following statement. Assuming that the primary name is the name of the facility and the information contained within the parenthesis is the corporation in which the entity falls under.
Bobby Thompson (Rutter)’s officials have agreed to waive a formal exit conference.
Thank you!
If I want to say the Murphys meaning Mr. and Mrs. Murphy, is it “Murphies” or Murphy’s. I’m not using it possessively, just referring to both of them such as “The Murphy’s are a nice couple.
I was asked - What could your past employers count on you for? I replied: “I can be counted on to show up, to be on time, to get the job done, and always to be possessed of integrity, loyalty, honesty and commitment.” I think that’s correct - vs. ...possessed by integrity, etc.
The package of Life Savers says, “5 Flavor”. Shouldn’t it be “flavors” (plural)? Why do you think it was left singular? The plural would make it rhyme better too. It’s a peculiar thing.