Recent Questions - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange |
- Should a period or comma be used before "instead" in "Because bananas are not orange, instead, bananas are yellow"?
- "Within" vs "within it" [closed]
- A word for "in case of"
- Did Tolkien actually make a comma splice in this one instance? [duplicate]
- Should we say "item number" or "items number" when refering to "number of items"?
- Conjunctions and Prepositions [closed]
- Term for meeting top level criteria by meeting all lower level criteria
- Is there a word for publishing old news online?
- What it is called to give your work to other for completion ( in administration) [closed]
- About conditionals (future tense) [migrated]
- Can you say 'all' if there is only one thing you are referring to?
- How to explain why "have" is not repeated in "you not only have X, but Y"?
- Does it sound strange/incorrect? [closed]
- Subject Verb Agreement with Decimals [closed]
- How do I determine what's being elided in this example?
- Omission of repeated "the"
- What is Anterhise?
- Does 'moonlighting' mean 'illegal work'?
- Is there an etymology connection between the words "sole" & "solecism"? [closed]
- Word/expression for the inherent ambiguity or difficulty of defining what constitutes a good outcome
- In, "Our nation declared independence 246 years ago tomorrow," precisely what does "tomorrow" modify?
- Is there more difference between European and American English than between European and American Spanish?
- Which is the correct phrase to use? On the app or to the app
- Single Word Request: "The process of corporatising" (similar, not that word though)
- Is the "what" necessary in some sentences with the "as <adverb> as <clause>" structure?
- What is a word that means truncate from the beginning?
- Who first objected to the term "chain mail"?
- Is "the way how" wrong?
- "These sort of things": is it grammatical? (2,670,000 hits on Google)
| Posted: 06 Jul 2022 08:23 AM PDT
Another way Niel could say the same thing is "Because bananas are not orange. Instead, bananas are yellow." Should we keep the period before 'instead' or not? I am confused. |
| "Within" vs "within it" [closed] Posted: 06 Jul 2022 08:05 AM PDT Are both the following sentences correct? 1- A cloud bears lots of water vapor within. 2- A cloud bears lots of water vapor within it. |
| Posted: 06 Jul 2022 07:26 AM PDT How can I say "in case of" in a single word (in below context)? I thought about "provided" but that doesn't seem to fit the context since it is, in my oppinion/understanding, rather applicable when something is there than when it is not there. An example sentence would be: "This is the procedure in case of missing material". |
| Did Tolkien actually make a comma splice in this one instance? [duplicate] Posted: 06 Jul 2022 07:00 AM PDT From The Return of the King, in one of the first chapters:
Ahem. "I have no help to send, therefore I must go myself", to me, sounds like the definition of a comma splice. Ought it not be one of these?
Why would Tolkien do this? I hate it when somebody I respect immensely and who I believe to be a master of language and writing does something like this. I sooner think that I have completely misunderstood something myself rather than this great man making such a "stupid rookie mistake". Please let there be a reasonable explanation which neither makes Tolkien nor myself seem stupid/ignorant/sloppy. |
| Should we say "item number" or "items number" when refering to "number of items"? Posted: 06 Jul 2022 06:39 AM PDT Let's consider a table with multiple specified containers. Each of those containers has multiple items inside. We'd like to have that table to look like: |Container_A | 7 | Where the "7" answers the question: "how many items are in the container?". Should I use "Item Number" as the table header or "Items Number"? Or perhaps both are incorrect and I should use "Number of items"? |
| Conjunctions and Prepositions [closed] Posted: 06 Jul 2022 04:44 AM PDT Can you please explain which words are conjunctions and prepositions in this sentence? The bear laughed at the fact that there was no hope of a feed from the river when it was frozen since a happy bear sees the positives and laughs at things that would cause others to feel sad. |
| Term for meeting top level criteria by meeting all lower level criteria Posted: 06 Jul 2022 05:19 AM PDT I'm trying to find the word for meeting a summary-level (top level) requirement/criteria, by meeting all lower level criteria. For example, assume the only requirements for being a car were 1) 4+ wheels, 2) has an engine, and 3) can carry one or more passengers. What I would like to say is that "By meeting the three sub-criteria, that thing can be classified as a car _________ ". The closest I can think is "by default" or "by proxy", but neither really seem to fit. EDIT: After asking this question, I think the phrase is "by virtue of", as in "This thing can be classified as a car by virtue of satisfying the three sub-criteria". Thoughts? |
| Is there a word for publishing old news online? Posted: 06 Jul 2022 08:37 AM PDT I wonder if there's a term or a word that describes the publishing of old/historic news from the archive to online in whatever way - for example, typing an article manually. |
| What it is called to give your work to other for completion ( in administration) [closed] Posted: 06 Jul 2022 01:49 AM PDT To run away from your responsibilities and give away your work to other. |
| About conditionals (future tense) [migrated] Posted: 06 Jul 2022 04:49 AM PDT I have been teaching conditionals to another student. I taught her the zero, first, second, and third conditional. We are not tackling mixed conditionals, and we were identifying which part of the sentence is second or third conditional. But I'm not sure which conditional the main clause is in this sentence: "If the weather is rainy, I am going to read a book at home". The if clause is first conditional, but what about the main clause? Thank you! |
| Can you say 'all' if there is only one thing you are referring to? Posted: 06 Jul 2022 12:02 AM PDT I need to apply single text to multiple items within an app. To be more efficient I prefer to say that the comment refers to 'all items' in the set. Sometimes, there is only one item. Is the statement 'all' still correct for one item? |
| How to explain why "have" is not repeated in "you not only have X, but Y"? Posted: 06 Jul 2022 07:20 AM PDT "With the new Smartplan Diary, you not only have the usual great scheduling tools you expect from our apps, but also detailed weather reports about the places you are going to visit" My student thinks it's strange there is the verb "have" in the first part but not the second part. He wants to make the second part like this: "but also have detailed weather reports..". How do I explain why it's okay to have a verb and why we don't need a verb in the second part? |
| Does it sound strange/incorrect? [closed] Posted: 05 Jul 2022 10:06 PM PDT One of my students has translated a poem into English (AmE). Could you please look at it and say if any changes should be made? It's really important to her. |
| Subject Verb Agreement with Decimals [closed] Posted: 05 Jul 2022 10:30 PM PDT If I have 0.5 kilometers, which would be more appropriate to say? There is 0.5 kilometers, or there are 0.5 kilometers? I am more inclined to say there are (formally) but I have heard people say there is. |
| How do I determine what's being elided in this example? Posted: 05 Jul 2022 06:02 PM PDT What's being elided in the sentence How do you decide to? Is this a "special" form of ellipsis? Which kind is it? Is there a general rule to find out how to fill in the gap from the discourse context in these cases? |
| Posted: 05 Jul 2022 05:40 PM PDT Which one is grammatically correct?
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| Posted: 06 Jul 2022 04:56 AM PDT In the pirate song by Henry Every, there are the lines:
I tried but failed to find any mention of Anterhise in any dictionary or online. Any tips? |
| Does 'moonlighting' mean 'illegal work'? Posted: 06 Jul 2022 05:22 AM PDT I was looking for the translation of the German word 'Schwarzarbeit' (black work) that means working illegally, without written contract, in order to avoid labour laws and taxation. The Google Translator has proposed the word 'moonlighting', but from the context I know that word, it's more about doing illicit things like brewing alcohol without license. Does 'moonlighting' have a (second) meaning that represents the meaning of 'Schwarzarbeit'? |
| Is there an etymology connection between the words "sole" & "solecism"? [closed] Posted: 06 Jul 2022 06:17 AM PDT Is there an etymology connection between the words "sole" & "solecism"? If the answer is yes, then why do they mean so differently? |
| Word/expression for the inherent ambiguity or difficulty of defining what constitutes a good outcome Posted: 06 Jul 2022 12:38 AM PDT TL;DR: I am in a need of a good, precise word or an expression capturing the notion that a computer science problem P remains open (just) because it is virtually impossible to specify/define what a good solution would look like. Unfortunately, it needs to fit the semi-formal style of scientific writing. Background: In the past, people have argued that their solution to P is the best because the outputs are human friendly. Other bunch of authors have argued that their answer to P is the best because the outputs of their solution to P make sense (kind of) even when tried on new, previously unseen inputs. And yet another school claims that their solution is the best because it considers a modification of the problem P - P' - that makes P a harder problem, and fares very well in that scenario. My attempts:
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| Posted: 05 Jul 2022 07:45 PM PDT I recently stumbled upon an eight-year old comment by Araucaria in which they made the following statement in a comment that was part of a discussion about post-positional phrases:
That statement suggests doubt about whether the subject phrases are viable. They certainly are viable, but their internal construction is not clear. Generally (the prime exception being cases of fronting), a PP modifies or complements a preceding phrase, which usually is the nearest preceding VP or an intervening NP. As examples: In will play on the beach of my youth, the PP of my youth adjectivally modifies the NP the beach. In will play on the beach next week, the PP next week adverbially modifies the VP will play. In ten years ago next Tuesday, we have an interesting syntactic puzzle. There are two PPs. The first is headed by the post-positional ago, and the second is headed conventionally by next. Without the latter PP, it would be clear that the complement of ago is ten years. How is this phrase structured? Does the PP next Tuesday look beyond the intervening preposition, ago, to adjectivally modify the NP ten years? Does the PP next Tuesday adverbially modify the entirety of the PP ten years ago? Or is there some better analysis? A semantic analysis is somewhat revealing. The phrase describes a point in time that occurs ten years prior to the Tuesday immediately following the point in time at which the phrase is stated. We understand the preposition ago as being an instruction to count backwards in time. We understand the NP ten years as telling us how far back to count. Normally, ago implies that the counting should start from now, the present day. Here, we understand next Tuesday as specifying a different point in time from which to begin counting. It seems clear that the phrase next Tuesday does not modify the duration ten years. That sort of modification would be non-sensical. Similarly, next Tuesday cannot properly be understood to modify the concept of the point in time that happens to be ten years prior to now. That leaves the possibility that next Tuesday modifies the preposition ago. The semantics of the phrase suggest that the preposition ago takes two arguments, one argument that specifies the starting point for counting and the other argument, usually implied to be now, that specifies how far back to count. However, our traditional model of PPs allows for only one argument (the complement of the PP), not two arguments--except when a PP is pre-modified by an adverbial. PPs can be modified by adverbials. Take, for instance, nearly in the soup. Based on semantics, the AdvP nearly does not seem to modify the NP the soup. Rather, it seems to modify either the entirety of the PP in the soup or solely the preposition in. My sense of the meaning is that nearly changes the meaning of in before in acts upon its complement the soup. This suggests in is taking two arguments. So it seems that nearly acts as an adverbial adjunct to the preposition in. In parallel, perhaps it is valid to analyze the NP next Tuesday as functioning as an adverbial adjunct to the preposition ago. On this basis, I argue that prepositions are capable of taking two arguments. One argument is the usual prepositional phrase complement that imbues the preposition with substance. The other argument, an optional argument, can modify the meaning of the preposition itself. In the case of nearly in, the meaning of in takes on a distinct change. It no longer means in. It means something like, not in but in an area that is close to being in. Similarly, in the case of ago next Tuesday, the meaning of ago is changed. It no longer is ago measured from the implicit now. It is ago measured from an explicit next Tuesday. That modified form of ago is what then acts upon the complement ten years. Thus, ten years ago next Tuesday essentially has the same structure as nearly in the soup, but the sequence of the members of the structure are reversed: Complement-Preposition-Adjunct vs. Adjunct-Preposition-Complement. Perhaps, when dealing with a post-positional, that sort of inversion can be expected and may even be necessary. Absent the preposition intervening between the complement and the adjunct, the phrase might be quite difficult to parse. That takes me full circle to the sentence in the title of this post: Our nation declared independence 246 years ago tomorrow. I believe tomorrow modifies the preposition ago. While I am sure papers must exist on this subject, I have not yet found one. Any suggestions or comments would be appreciated. |
| Posted: 06 Jul 2022 03:46 AM PDT As a Spanish (Spain) speaking person I can notice the differences between European and American Spanish. Is there also such a big difference between European and American English? Vocabulary and Phoneticaly wise. |
| Which is the correct phrase to use? On the app or to the app Posted: 06 Jul 2022 06:00 AM PDT The context is "What kind of a book can be added on the app/ to the app?" When I typed the sentence "What kind of a book can be added on the app?" on Grammarly it was autocorrected "What kind of a book can be added to the app?" |
| Single Word Request: "The process of corporatising" (similar, not that word though) Posted: 05 Jul 2022 06:04 PM PDT I remember using a word in the following context: There is this street with small family businesses, and my cousin used a word to describe that in a few years time it would likely be replaced by large businesses, it had '-ation' and possibly '-isation'. |
| Is the "what" necessary in some sentences with the "as <adverb> as <clause>" structure? Posted: 06 Jul 2022 01:06 AM PDT Is using "what" before the clause necessary in some sentences with the structure as <adverb> as <clause>? For example,
Or, would the sentence be better off if I just used "than" instead?
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| What is a word that means truncate from the beginning? Posted: 06 Jul 2022 06:34 AM PDT I am creating some software that has the concept of truncating a one-dimensional array from either the left or right end. I'm happy using the word truncate to describe lopping off the rightmost end of the array, but it doesn't feel right to use this word when removing array elements from the beginning. I've considered left-truncate but that seems to have another meaning in statistics. "I've (left-truncated) the array [1,2,3,4,5] and am left with [3,4,5]" |
| Who first objected to the term "chain mail"? Posted: 06 Jul 2022 04:04 AM PDT Recently, I've become aware of a new (to me) peeve: some people say that chain mail/chain-mail/chainmail is incorrect in some way when talking about armor, and that the proper way to refer to it is mail or maille.* Now, it's true that it's not exactly composed of chains, although loops of mail are closer to being a chain than a chain link fence is. But anyway, the point of this question is not to ask for an evaluation of this peeve, or your opinion of it. What I want to know is if all these people independently came to the conclusion that the term was illogical, or if they absorbed this idea from some common source. The term chain mail has been around for a while. The OED's earliest citation is from 1822; using Google Books, I was able to find what seem to be even earlier examples: 1789:
– Original Letters, Written During the Reigns of Henry VI, Edward IV and Richard III., edited by Sir John Fenn 1796:
– Fabliaux Or Tales, Abridged from French Manuscripts of the XIIth and XIIIth Centuries by M. Le Grand So, I'm curious about the first attested objection to the term. How early is it, and who made it? What was the reason given, if any? *Examples:
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| Posted: 05 Jul 2022 07:05 PM PDT I was correcting an ESL learner who said "It is the way how we write." I realize "It is the way we write" is correct and "It is how we write" is correct, but "It is the way how we write" looks wrong to me, despite that when I say it out loud it sounds perfectly normal if I'm speaking fast. What I mean is, if an ESL learner said it, it would sound wrong. But when I say it as a native speaker, it seems okay though not felicitous. So I can't tell. Is it grammatically wrong? |
| "These sort of things": is it grammatical? (2,670,000 hits on Google) Posted: 06 Jul 2022 03:56 AM PDT I was interested in the following sentence which appeared in an article titled "Colorless, Tasteless but Not Dangerous" by Dwight Garner in The New York Times (November 15, 2010).
Can someone clarify if the fragment "these sort of things" is ungrammatical, as I think it is? I would reword "sort" with "sorts", but I'm not sure on this correction because the phrase "these sort of things" occurs on many occasions on The New York Times, it frequently occurs in others newspapers and, more generally, it has 2,670,000 hits on Google Search. So I am wondering if it is in common usage, albeit it isn't the highest register. |
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