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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I wrote this sentence talking about a website: “This is neither the beginning nor the end of something.”
I wanted to say that I wasn’t trying to start something new, it was just something temporary before I started the real thing.
Someone told me “something” is grammatically incorrect and that I should have used “anything” but in my opinion it implies a change in the whole meaning of the sentence.
I’d like to hear some other opinions about it.
I’m wondering if there is a general rule for capitalizing prepositions in film titles.
For instance, one of my favourite horror films is THE DEVIL RIDES OUT, but The Devil Rides out (lower-case “o”) is stylistically awkward. Or Ferris Bueller’s Day off. Or the classic example would be those saucy British comedies of yesteryear, the Carry on series -- no one can figure out whether to call them Carry Ons or Carry ons, and as for the one called Carry On Behind, ought we to start writing it Carry on behind?
Someone help me out of this spiral of confusion!!!
I read this in an article,
“Tape all your screws to your air conditioner, so you’ll have them ready come next season.”
How do you suppose that usage of the word “come” came about? I’ve heard it, but I don’t hear it often.
I have a list of Computer Programs that I am including in some documentation and have a question regarding the use of commas.
The list looks like this: “Test.prg” “Test2.prg” “Test3.prg”
If I included this list in a sentence I tend to think that the programs should be separated by commas but the commas should be outside the quotes like this: “Test.prg”, “Test2.prg”, and “Test3.prg”.
Another program says that the commas (and the period) belong inside the quotes like: “Test.prg,” “Test2.prg,” and “Test3.prg.”
I think this just looks completely idiotic. I know for most quotes, punctuation belongs inside the quotes but I believe in this instance, the quotation marks aren’t meaning dialog but just another part of the item name and so should not be treated as regular quotation marks.
Thanks,
Evan
Is the word “rum” like the word “Deer”? You never say “deers” for the plural--what about rum. Is it both singular and plural in that form? You can never say “rums” can you?
Hello everybody there! A few days ago a friend of mine asked me a question like this: ‘is it possible to say in English ‘’See you laters'’ with the ‘s’ attached to ‘later’ ‘? She claimed she had heard it from an English native. As a humble non-native speaker of English, I was a bit puzzled and found no answer. And how do YOU feel about this?
One thing that often makes me stop and think is when people use the following type of statement: “I don’t think you told me to pick up milk.” Is it true that I don’t think? No. It is true that “I think you didn’t tell me to pick up milk.” But because of my lifetime speaking habits, I don’t even take the time to speak this way. And it even sounds slightly snooty. How do other people feel about this?
Why does written English use so few diacritic marks compared with many other languages?
Is it appropriate to say, “If it were possible for tides to cause earthquakes, scientific evidence would have been found long ago.” or is “If it had been possible for tides to cause earthquakes, scientific evidence would have been found long ago.” more appropriate?
My wife and I have this ongoing battle over the word sundae. She always pronounces it sunDUH while I say it’s sunDAY because when they were first made, one could only get the ice-cream treat on Sunday. She says I’m nuts - I say she’s kinda douchey. Who’s correct - anyone know?
