Etymology time!
You is originally the second person plural. Via French influence, you (plural) started to be used since 12th c. to show respect. To superiors, then to strangers, to equals, and ultimately it replaced thou(singular) as a general form of address (1575) and replaced it in the 2nd person singular position.
So naturally, when it replaced thou, the word you brought its plural form of to be with it.
That’s not talking about usage of neither/nor, though. That article is just talking about or/nor by themselves, excluding the warning section which is irrelevant.
It should be neither/nor.
I was hoping someone would bother to write an article about this.
Having just read Stephen Pinker's book 'The Sense of Style' (probably the best book on grammar and language I have ever read) I'm of the opinion that if it's a mistake that is missed by 95% of people, it's not really a mistake.
Dredging up little-known grammar conventions and asserting their factual correctness is a bit sanctimonious.
Finally, I am annoyed by the Guardian using a hyphen to connect a range of numbers. It should be an en-dash (–), if they are following any of the well-known style guides.
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/hermit
It's a neutral word (i.e. a descriptive noun), but it can have positive or negative connotations in a given context. I usually see it used in a negative context.
"In premises" appears to be more frequent in British English than in American English.
The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language is the most comprehensive reference work concerning English grammar. But it's huge, like 2,000 pages.
Fortunately the same editors have produced A Students Introduction to English Grammar which is far more succinct while still being rather comprehensive.
These are not style guides like The Elements of Style but are books on grammar.
As an introduction: The Elements of Style makes a lot of false claims about grammar and style (that have either become outdated or weren't even used when the book was written). This article by linguist Geoffrey Pullum explains a bit about it.
As you notice, a lot of their advice is a bit convoluted. Their "perfect" sentence would probably look something like this:
> He was an interesting talker, a man who had traveled all over the world, and lived in a half a dozen countries.
This is an example of asyndetic coordination: coordination w/o and or but. It's not used much in formal writing, but appears fairly often in literature (where White, especially, formed much of his opinions). It emphasizes the duality of the man in this construction.
You're also right that the second comma might not be necessary; such commas are often omitted when the coordination links two predicates (here, "a man who had [traveled] and [lived]")--indeed that my be a preferred omission.
It can be either depending on the context of the sentence.
I personally prefer "A group (of anything) is ..."
The word "deboning" does not seem to have existed before 1920, while "boning" dates back centuries.
This may mean that it was invented as an alternative to "boning" as that word gained use as a slang word for having sex (although I don't know when that sense of the word came about). "I was deboning the chicken when she walked in" has a less disturbing ring to it than "I was boning the chicken when she walked in".
This is just theorizing on my part, though.
I've literally never heard someone say benefit of doubt. The idiom is benefit of the doubt. Google Ngram Viewer seems to agree.
Rise does not take an object, as it is an intransitive verb. It is an irregular verb; its three forms are rise, rose, risen:
The sun rose at 5.30 this morning.
Rents have risen sharply in this part of town.
Source: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/grammar/british-grammar/raise-or-rise
So according to this definition of the verb, nothing can ever ‘be risen’. We can artificially raise the river level but then we would say ‘the river level has been raised’
I hope this helps!
I think this sums it up best - contraction of will not, first recorded mid-15c. as wynnot, later wonnot (1580s) before the modern form emerged 1660s
It depends on what you mean by proper. Neither phrase made much of an appearance in print until recently. I think they are both too informal for formal writing. If you use I couldn't care less, you won't have people claiming that you've made a mistake as some people would react to I could care less. From the point of view of usage, both phrases are used to mean the same thing, thus they have the same meaning.
The OED lists usages back to 1831 in an entry that hasn't been updated since 1920.
This Google ngram shows that talentless is now used more often than without talent in the published sources it has surveyed. (Though of course we'd need to include other variations than without talent in order to get a better picture of things.)
In short, I cannot imagine why anyone would not think that talentless is a perfectly good word to use in all contexts formal or otherwise. I suppose there could be some dialectical issues at play where in some dialects of English its use is discouraged but I haven't encountered this myself. Did some style guide tell you not to use it? What is the context for this question?
The correct word to use in the phrase "the nick of time" is "nick", not "nic". "Nic" isn't even a recognised word.
And, the phrase means "only just in time". It's used to describe something that happens at the last minute. A better version of your friend's phrase would be "Picnic, in the nick of time before the end of spring...". I don't think that "in the nick of spring-time" works.
EDIT: A typo, here in /r/Grammar? No!
The Elements of Style is a classic, but I've also heard good things about Eats, Shoots & Leaves. The main thing I would suggest to you if you want to improve your grammar is to read what you write out loud. If there's a natural pause after a clause or a word, take that into account and throw a comma, dash, semi-colon, or period into your sentence. If you find yourself rambling as you read a sentence, it's probably a run-on. If it's halted and awkward, it may be a fragment. Good luck!
Google's survey of published texts is generally useful for things like this. According to the search I ran, "by" comes out significantly ahead with over 80% of the overall usage.
There's a link in the sidebar about when to use "a" or "an" before a word.
In the case of "historical", some people (some dialects) do not pronounce the initial "h" which would call for using "an". Some people do pronounce the "h" and therefore use "a". The "an" usage used to be very popular, dominant even, so there are some people who feel this is the correct usage regardless of how they actually pronounce the word.
Here is a link to a Google ngram showing this. Google goes through all the books it has digitized and allows us to see how usage has changed over the years. At the link you can clearly see that after "an historical" dominating for over a hundred years, in 1940 "a historical" became the more popular usage in published works. Here is another link showing the use of "a historical" as a percentage of use ("a"/("a"+"an")). What's interesting to me is that the use of "an historical" even at 20% is more popular now than "a historical" was in 1800 at 10%.
Presumably downvoted because both versions - passersby and passers-by - are correct.
I am not a big fan of arguments based on an appeal to authority, but you really should consider Prof. Pullem's status as an authority. It will help you understand that his criticisms of The Elements of Style are based on evidence, and you will see that the pronouncements in the little book are not evidence based.
Funny story: the French Academy is about as irrelevant as the Queen's English Society. They can make as many pronouncements from on high as they like, but standards in la Francophonie are determined by usage just as they are in the Anglophone world.
There's nothing bizarre about redundancy. Is "He eats" illogical because it has both 'he' and -s? Redundancy is a totally natural feature of language that's been around, in various forms, as long as language has. Logic's a newcomer.
If you think grammar nazis have a better command of any given language than native-speaker linguists of said language, you're wrong. Anglophone grammar nazis think that restrictive relative clauses use who, that, and zeros, and non-restrictive ones only which, though which is a perfectly good restrictive relative pronoun. Anglophone grammar nazis regularly go on the most absurd rants against the passive voice, but even The Elements of Style, written by a pair of grammar nazis if grammar nazis ever were, misdiagnoses 3 passive-less sentences as passives. It offered a total of four sentences as examples of the passive.
Linguistics is the nitty gritty, grammar nazis are the ones who abuse technical terms like passive voice, the ones who stigmatize usages because they're characteristic of lower SES groups, or just for no reason at all.
Here's what Google Ngram Viewer says. From wins there.
I think of makes some sense since it's a one-to-ten scale—i.e., the scale has the characteristic of displaying a measurement between one and ten. But saying it out loud as I write this, from comes more naturally. (That said, I don't think I'd make fun of you if you said of—Ngram shows that to be common enough not to be ridiculous.)
Edit: Make sure to see /u/Bayoris's comment below.
> I've never heard of a warm breeze
Really? You must never visit warmer climes (good for you! They suck!). Anyhoo, here's a Google survey of published sources which while cool breeze dominates warm breeze is well represented.
But that aside, since cool and breeze don't mean the same thing then there can be no redundancy even if cool breeze were the only construction that ever happens in the form of x breeze.
The American Heritage Dictionary calls ambience a variant of ambiance. But ambience gets far more play in the New York Times, slate.com, Los Angeles Times, and Wall Street Journal.
Assuming that neither name has already been ~~copyrighted~~ trademarked, I think the choice is yours.
Garner and Columbia both say ambience.
Edited to add that ambiance would give it a French-ass vibe and people would probably say it in the affected \AHM bee AHNZ\ way. Probably better to go with ambience so people call your company \AM bee əns.
There is, to the best of my knowledge, no consistent pattern or rule to follow when deriving adjectives in -ic or -ical.
The only references available on the matter are, funnily enough, references.
First, consult a dictionary, because some -ic/-ical forms can mean different things (historic/historical).
If there is no precedent, then Google nGram can help you find out the most used form.
TL;DR there seem to be no common dictionary definitions for either, and etiologic appears to be slightly more used.
While strife and strive both probably came from the French verb estriver/estrif, that was in the 1200s.
If the writer is addressing anyone other than 800-year-old Frenchmen, the word is much, much too archaic to use.
It is a mistake and should be changed. As the sentence reads now, Jane's passion for the arts is completely overshadowed by how she apparently doesn't understand the difference between "strife" and "strive."
Oxford Dictionaries defines "utopic" as "Another term for utopian", which suggests that the latter is the usual word. Merriam Webster and Collins have "utopian" but no entry for "utopic". This Ngram shows that "utopian" is by far the more common of the two in print (whether capitalized or not).
Either is a valid word, but one is certainly more established and usual than the other.
Purely in terms of usage, there's been debate about this in the past, but "fewer cattle" has won out since the 1920s.
An exception to "no apostrophes for plurals" rule is when referring to plural single letters - for example, "several s's". In absence of guidance here, I believe that this property would carry over and allow you to use an apostrophe in the model number, especially because you say the name of the letter "s". If you absolutely cannot write "2000s units" (which in your example does not sound terribly awkward), the best thing to do is to use "2000s's".
Source: OxfordDictionaries.com (see section: "Apostrophes and plural forms")
I believe that this “less A than B” is a variation of “not so much A as B”).
In both constructions the A part is an assumption or first impression on the part of the reader, while B overturns that assumption.
In this example, a reader might assume from his bluster that Trump feels superior when in fact he feels inferior.
> Since none has the meanings “not one” and “not any,” some insist that it always be treated as a singular and be followed by a singular verb: The rescue party searched for survivors, but none was found.However, none has been used with both singular and plural verbs since the 9th century. When the sense is “not any persons or things” (as in the example above), the plural is more common: … none were found. Only when none is clearly intended to mean “not one” or “not any” is it followed by a singular verb: Of all my articles, none has received more acclaim than my latest one.
Although I agree with Strunk on this point, because the convention is pretty common in prose, I'd be careful about looking to The Elements of Style for many style or grammar issues. The advice is notably wrong on many grammar issues and rather inconsistent with writers' practices, even at the time it was written.
One thing to be wary of is that books like Garner's and Elements of Style are style guides and not books on grammar. They exist to help you sound like you are talking/writing in the prestige dialect of your area. But do not take their style suggestions as rules of grammar. The idea is that assuming you have good content you wish to communicate to others those books will help you look like you are part of the educated elite. This isn't a bad thing, necessarily, but it is a particular style you will be affecting.
A book that I only glanced through but I think makes clearer these issues of style in a more useful manner is Steven Pinker's The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century. It's not perfect and there are things I disagree with strenuously but he does a much better job of distinguishing between style and grammar and provides some really nice insight into good style techniques that aren't reducible to arbitrary dictates like avoiding split infinitives.
If you had any idea what you're talking about you wouldn't be advising people to read The Elements of Style. Have you even read it? The first chapter is titled "Elementary Rules of Usage". Not "Tips for a Better Style of Writing". It sets itself out as a rulebook from the start.
My understanding is that White wrote it on his own after Strunk had died, based on some notes that Strunk had made 40 or 50 years before. If it was a collaboration then I'm happy to amend my comment to read "the ramblings of two hypocrites telling you, etc".
I've never read Truss or Fowler so there was no tacit acceptance of their work. I don't like to comment on things I've not read.
From Strunk & White The Elements of Style - "The two words are commonly interchanged, but there is a distinction worth observing: farther serves best as a distance word, further as a time or quantity word. You chase a ball farther than the other fellow; your pursue an object further."
Also, there is a Grammar Girl article about it.
"The Elements of Style" and "Eats, Shoots & Leaves" are both garbage, because both use the very errors they rail against over and over, focus on rather trivial points of style rather than communicative capacity, and do not go over the points you want to work on. You need a book that explains English grammar. For that I recommend Murphy's English Grammar in Use, which is basically required reading for any student of English as a foreign language. I take it from your post that you're going to college somewhere. I absolutely guarantee that, if you have ESL students anywhere near you, this book is available at a library that they frequent.
These are two different patterns, aren't they?
Are you comparing apples and oranges?
All the "different" sentences in your post seem right to me. You have various options there.
With regard to the options in the first sentence (from/than/to), this is explained clearly enough in the usage note here: http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/different
Look at this. The second example is the same you used:
>I’d waited an hour for the bus.
>
>Past perfect simple emphasises the completion of the activity (the waiting is over).
>
>I’d been waiting an hour for the bus.
>
>Past perfect continuous focuses on the duration of the activity.
​
Delve is almost always used as a verb. In fact, I am not at all familiar with it's use as a noun; I'm pretty sure I've never heard it that way.
This wouldn't be correct because "aforementioned" is an adjective rather than a verb so it needs to go before a noun which has already been, well, mentioned. E.g.
or
In your sentence you would have to say:
or
Less formal, but the level of informality depends on the specific construction.
For example, "If I was rich, I would buy a golden bathtub" doesn't sound very informal to me, but "I wouldn't do that if I was you" does (probably because it's a very commonly heard construction).
Checking written sources, we can see that "if I was" has been competing with "if I were" for about 250 years, with the jury still out.
Wiktionary has nevermind as "US regional" or "common misspelling". I've never even seen never-mind. I don't know why you'd hyphenate that: never is an adverb modifying mind.
But what happens in real life (actually the unreal world of professionally edited publications)? Almost always <em>never mind</em>.
Depending on which dictionary you look in (in American English), 'datum' is the singular form of the plural word data. However, Oxford says that in American English 'data' can be plural or singular, which makes both 'is' and 'are' acceptable. In British English, 'data' is treated as a mass noun (just like 'information'), not a plural noun.
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/data?q=data
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/english/data
It's called a grammatical ellipsis and it is legitimate. When you write in this manner, it's called writing in elliptical form (or elliptical style). Journalists use this form very often in their headlines.
This is a great book to learn grammar with. It's simply written and contains lots of practice exercises. It's Canadian though, so if you're looking for British or Aussie English there may be better choices.
Also, the Chicago Manual of Style is an excellent resource. You have to pay for a subscription (I'm an editor so for me it's a necessary expense), but virtually every grammar question you could think of is answered.
The truth is both are correct. A lot of modern teachers will tell you to use that with restrictive adjective clauses and which with non-restrictive clauses. As Steven Pinker explains in his book The Sense of Style, however, there is no historical validation for this practice. All things being equal, it's a wise paradigm to adopt, nevertheless.
We all have opinions about semicolons.
Basically, they were popular in the nineteenth century, and they've been going out of style. Most writers try to avoid them or use dashes instead.
But! To make things easy for you, think of a semicolon like a period. It can go wherever you would end a sentence; the main purpose of a semicolon is to connect like minded clauses. You can also use semicolons to connect clauses with connective adverbs (i.e. The fish likes swimming; however, he dislikes cupcakes). Students and younger writers tend to utilize the semi-colon willy nilly, which is always something that I try to teach them to avoid.
I hope I helped. You should read "On Writing Well." The author, William Zinsser is an old English teacher and a wizard with words. He explains all about the semicolon (and writing in general) in a funny, readable way.
TL;DR - Be careful using semicolons too much, as they are an antiquated punctuation mark, and you (typically) use semicolons to connect independent clauses.
EDIT: Oh! I forgot to mention that your sentence works fine. You'll notice you have an independent clause on each side of the semicolon.
You didn't provide a source other than you for the proposition that redundancy is ungrammatical. My complaint is that I don't know you, so I can't evaluate you as an authority.
To help you understand why you should discard your copy of The Elements of Style, read this. Prof. Pullum is the second author of The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language.
The first one certainly is but the second one is trickier. From Merriam-Webster
>a figure of speech comparing two unlike things that is often introduced by like or as (as in cheeks like roses)
The apple is a delicious piece of fruit so there's no real comparison here, although the comparative simile structure is used. I would say that it is ostensibly a simile but an extremely poor one that offers nothing fresh or interesting. This would be a teacher's example of how not to write a simile.
The case is closed, Cambridge has spoken:
We can use some object pronouns (me, him, her, us and them) as short answers, particularly in informal speaking:
A: Who ate all the biscuits?
B: Me.
And then there's this:
>Who killed Cock Robin?
>I, said the Sparrow,
>Who saw him die?
>I, said the Fly,
I guess the answer is - both are fine. I hate when the answer is both -.-
The word "director" is not a title in the sense that Professor or President is a title. Merriam-Webster defines "title" as "an appellation of dignity, honor, distinction, or preeminence attached to a person or family by virtue of rank, office, precedent, privilege, attainment, or lands." You earn such a title by, say, earning an academic degree or a military rank. You'd write such a title in front of the person's name on, say, a business card or envelope. It replaces the generic title ("Mr," "Ms" etc), and omitting it is considered disrespectful.
None of this is true for "director": anyone who makes a movie has the right to call themselves a director, and even the greatest directors in the world don't have to be introduced or mentioned using the word.
Your example sentence doesn't use "director" as a title but as a descriptor. As such, it shouldn't have an uppercase first letter. It fits patterns such as the following:
> Noted author Frank Jenkins appeared to be drunk at a book signing last Tuesday.
> Self-described "funky chicken" and amateur banjo player Mary DiGiorgio made waves yesterday by singing the national anthem out of tune.
Pretty much any descriptive noun phrase can come before the person's name. This construction is often found in journalism, I guess because it saves space. For some reason, Dan Brown (of the "Da Vinci Code") really likes this construction, and Geoffrey K. Pullum berates him for it in this epic takedown:
> Putting curriculum vitae details into complex modifiers on proper names or definite descriptions is what you do in journalistic stories about deaths; you just don't do it in describing an event in a narrative.-
I would use cliches without the accent if I wasn't following a style guide. Some style guides would prescribe clichés. I'd be surprised if any English speaker used clichées. Google Ngram viewer agrees with my instincts.
Mod. English | Old English | Proto-Germanic | Proto-Indo-European |
---|---|---|---|
Who | hwa | *khwas, *khwes, *khwo | *qwos/*qwes |
What | hwæt | *khwat | *qwod < *qwos |
Where | hwær, hwar | *khwar | *qwo- |
When | hwænne, hwenne, hwonne | *khwa- | *qwo- |
Why | hwi < hwæt | *khwi | *qwei < *qwo- |
How | hu | *hwo | *qwo- |
All from etymonline.com.
It explicitly refers to a "negative" association (i.e., it's not just implied). According to Merriam-Webster, the word originally referred to a scar from a hot iron, which was applied to criminals. That scar was a mark of shame. This being said, I'd say yes, "negative stigma"sounds awfully redundant.
Not sure if you saw <strong>my comment</strong>, but the entire book is scanned and can be viewed <strong>here</strong> on Archive.org
While we're on the subject, this comma is inappropriate:
> I learned in school, that a comma before "too" is mandatory
Set off nonrestrictive clauses, but not restrictive clauses, with commas. http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/words/relative-clauses
We have two sentences to consider:
1 uses "good memory" as a non-count noun phrase. So, we do not use the determiner "a." This could mean that he generally memorizes things well.
2 uses "good memory" as a count noun phrase, which is why we use the determiner "a." This could mean that he has a singularly good ability to memorize things, possibly for a particular context.
However, the difference in meaning here is so subtle that most people won't consider the two sentences to differ in meaning at all. Both sentences are correct, but I find that most people would use sentence 2. Use sentence 2.
I give you some evidence showing that 2 is the most common phrasing: good memory | English examples in context | Ludwig
I've never seen it used as a plural like that; neither has Google, and dictionaries show the plural as plethoras. I think you've misheard the idiom.
FWIW the most recent Classical etymology is late Latin, where it's a first-declension noun, so even if you wanted to be Classical the plural would be plethorae. (EDIT: I would strongly recommend plethoras if you ever have some reason to pluralize it; I just wanted to make sure you know plethora is not a plural in any language.)
There's no good reason to avoid it, it's just fallen out of fashion. Words and phrases experience peaks and dips in their usage, often without any rhyme or reason. "Inasmuch as" seems to be experiencing a long and gradual decline in popularity. For now though, it's still a perfectly serviceable phrase, so feel free to use it as much as you like.
I would say something like:
>Please compress your photo to the .zip format.
Though I don't know why would you compress a photo to zip, images formats are designed to be highly compressed. I'd suggest optimizing the photo using something like PngGauntlet (lossless) for PNG, Jpeg-Optimizer (lossy, stick to ~80) for JPEGs.
Amenable describes someone or something that’s “willing to agree or to accept something that is wanted or asked for,” which I think may be a bit broad for your intended meaning. (For instance, I’m guessing that even a flexi plus ticket has some restrictions?)
I wouldn’t go with “amenable” there. I think “flexible” would be fine, though at your option, you could choose a word other than “flexible” since your sentence already has “flexi” earlier (which is almost the same word).
If it wouldn’t be unwelcome, I also have two other comments that aren’t directly related to your question—
https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/english-grammar-boot-camp.html
Imo this is the best single course on the basics of english. She discusses not only what is being done, but also why it is being done and how it could be different. It is--for a grammar course--playful.
You'll never look at English the same way again.
https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/english-grammar-boot-camp.html
It comes with a pdf book if you dont want to watch all 20 hours of video. Completing the course will make sure you dont miss anything obvious.
The Chicago Guide to Grammar, Usage, and Punctuation by Bryan Garner is excellent—I can highly recommend it.
(That last sentence has an Amazon link, but there’s no referral code or anything.)
The Gregg Reference Manual is badly out of date. The Elements of Style is 100 years out of date!
Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace is a great book if you want to learn how to write. And if you have a usage question, Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage is the best (it pisses all over Garner's book).
I don't think it's necessary to be able to name every term, but there are a lot of books you can read. The Chicago Manual of Style has a brief explanation of all the parts of speech.
Other books you can check out include Garner's American Usage (3rd edition) and The Elements of Style (4th edition).
Also, you should probably just do a google search for "parts of speech." I'm sure you'll be able to find information on parts of speech. look https://www.google.com/#q=english+parts+of+speech
Disagree. Strunk and White is full of nonsensical rules that make your writing worse just because someone misunderstood Latin a long time ago.
For a good usage guide, though in dictionary form rather than a narrative screed, I adore Garner's Modern American Usage.
English Grammar for Students of Latin
Warriner's English Grammar and Composition, complete course. Stephen King recommends this in his On Writing. This is the one I have been self-teaching from. It has served me well.
One of White's fictitious grammar rules tells us when to use that and which. He had to revise an edition because Strunk didn't follow White's rule. If you read White's other work, you'll see that be didn't follow his own work.
The Elements of Style do have value. Understanding why you should ignore the book is an important step towards understanding usage and grammar. Also, if someone suggests the book as an authority, you have a convenient benchmark to gauge that person's advice.
A lot of those sound like a prescriptivist wishing for the good ol' days. And then there's his rec for a grammar reference at the bottom, which I believe says it all.
>If you’re looking for a practical, quick guide to proper grammar, I suggest the tried-and-true classic The Elements of Style, by William Strunk, Jr. and E. B. White.
Read and commit to memory as much of Strunk & White's The Elements of Style as you can. Read and reread their 'Words and Expressions Commonly Misused' section. You'll be shocked how often they turn up in everyday speech and writing.
Here's a link to get you started: http://www.bartleby.com/141/
/u/thundahstruck's link includes a lot of false positives. If you include the word scale, "scale of one to 10" is considerably more popular.
Some grammar mavens will insist on warmly as it is the "proper" adverb form here whereas warm should be reserved for use as an adjective, verb or noun.
But it turns out that usage is king and is what determines what is grammatical. The OED lists warm as an adverb with citations going all the way back to 1,000 CE: "Bewreoh ðe wearme". I don't know what that means but I trust that the OED does and is using it appropriately. [A little more research later and I get something like cover yourself warm or dress warm (!!).)
In Google's survey of published works warmly clearly wins out but warm does receive a significant amount of usage. [Note, this is not a very sophisticated search.] This isn't too surprising given what I said above.
So in the end, certain types of folks will expect "warmly" and will think that "warm" here is incorrect and even ungrammatical. In certain formal contexts you might take this into consideration even if you find their arguments baseless.
I couldn't find the OP's phrases in ngram, but farther/further afield leans toward use of further.
Oxford lists "unvaccinated" as a word. Nonvaccinated is not listed in Oxford. On that basis, without knowing more, I'd go with unvaccinated.
I agree with you, and Merriam Webster and Oxford Dictionaries both define "whichever" as a restricted choice.
However, it seems "whichever" does not have to refer back to previously mentioned options; in this case it could be "whichever avenue (out of all possible avenues) he pursues..." But yeah, the fact that two options were just presented seems to limit the choice, and I would have definitely gone with "whatever".
A cardinal number like "five" can be a noun or an adjective.
One rule is that an adjective can follow certain existence verbs (is, seems, appears, etc.).
> He is old.
> He is five.
> He is five years old.
You can also use a noun after "is".
> He is a child.
> He is a five-year-old child.
> He is five years of age.
> He is five.
> He is a five-year-old.
This sounds quite natural and understandable.
However, things change when you use a different kind of verb. "Act" is not an "existence" verb. For example, you can say "she is quick" but you cannot say "~~she acted quick.~~" It has to be "quickly". The verb "act" takes an adverb, not an adjective.
For this reason, it sounds a little uncommon and unusual to say, "he acts five".
You could say this:
> He acts as if he were five years old.
> He acts as if he were five.
> He acts like a five-year-old child.
> He acts like a five-year-old.
However, there's a special usage of the verb "act" that is explained at point 5.1 here. When used in this sense, "act" means "behave so as to appear to be; pretend to be". (Oxford) The word is treated differently in this situation. It is possible to use an adjective like "five" after this.
> He acts five.
Is it grammatically possible? Yes. But it is a little irregular and not perhaps what an English speaker would first think of saying.
EDIT: Amended to incorporate SpeedyTechie's points below.
>Sure, #3 on this list.
.
From that link is this:
># 3. Subject-Verb Agreement
>The subject
and verb
must always agree in number.
.
er, no.
It has its origins in the legal system. It's the doubt because the doubt to which the phrase refers is reasonable doubt. If there is any reasonable doubt as to whether a defendant committed the crime for which they (¯_(ツ)_/¯) are being tried, thëy are entitled to the benefit of the doubt.
> Where the judge has instructed the jury fully as to the presumptions of innocence in favor of accused, and that if, after considering all the evidence in the case, they have a reasonable doubt as to his guilt, it is their duty to give him the benefit of the doubt and acquit him, and that the state must satisfy them of his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
If you mean Mr. X supervises the whole operation, you used an archaic meaning. The word does mean to see from above - a balcony can overlook Central Park.
If your colleague thinks English words get only one meaning, I don't know how you could convince him he's wrong.
Of course, "wont" can be used as an adjective, i.e. in the sense of "accustomed".
If you use it as an adjective, you can add the "to do" or not. I haven't looked this up, but my instinct would be to add the "to do". If you don't, the construction has an archaic or poetic feel.
Look carefully at the examples here:
Yeah, it's surprisingly hard to find authoritative sources that demonstrate contractions with proper nouns.
For instance, a page on the Cambridge Dictionary site only provides a single example: John'll.
Many style guides also advise against using contractions in formal writing, so they don't bother providing any examples of correct use at all.
Curiously, your son isn't the first person to encounter this "rule" against contractions with proper nouns. I wonder if in the past there was some influential authority who said this was improper usage, and that this had been passed on through the education system.
I think it's perfectly correct, and the second definition here seems to cover it.
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/read
Now, as for how it may sound awkward to your friend, I just noticed after thinking about your example that I never use 'read' in questions; I usually go for 'say' instead.
'What does that box say?'
However, when making statements I use both 'say' and 'read', indifferently.
"The shirt reads/says 'I love grammar'."
You can find a lot about whether a company is singular or plural. I think in the US it has to be singular while in the UK it can be either (I'm English and both sound OK to me). For example
"[But] generally in AmE, collective nouns take singular verbs, as in ... the board has decided ... Just as the opposite habit obtains in BrE, where collective nouns tend to take plural verbs. The British tend to write ... the board have considered..." From https://www.quora.com/Whats-grammatically-correct-company-name-are-looking-to-or-company-name-is-looking-to
<em>shat</em> appears to be more common than <em>shitted</em>, but curiously, <em>bullshitted</em> is far more common than <em>bullshat</em>. Frankly I think bullshat sounds cool and I would enjoy pioneering its use, but I'd have to do so with the knowledge that it's not yet established.
>"Step foot," however, isn't a dialectical usage, it's just wrong =P
Is this an evidence-based claim? The phrase has appeared in books since the 1830s and is growing in popularity.
"It" and "all" are both fine in this context. This is a colloquialism, and not really a grammatical issue.
See definition #5 at Merriam Webster for support of your use of "it" in this context.
At oxforddictionaries.com, it is definition #7 that supports your usage.
It's somewhat common in mathematics and pretty standard in computer-programming code. Those account for both of Wiktionary's examples.
In the United Kingdom, it's a class thing. As explained here, the upper class calls it "supper" (pronounced "suppah"), to the middle class, it's "dinner," while for the working class, it's "tea."
It's the sibilant final ending that can trip people up into thinking singular demonyms like "a Chinese," "a Portuguese" or "a Swiss" are not correct. If you need a source to refer to, you can see these examples taught in the text <em>English Grammar Today</em>.
For a more technical discussion, you might find this presentation on the subject interesting. It also touches upon why some may consider demonyms like "a Chinese" to be impolite.
In this case, are. None is plural when it refers to a countable noun, and singular when referring to a mass/uncountable noun.
None of them are going. None of the boys are tall.
None of the snow is powdery. None of the water is salty.
Merriam-Webster for a source that lists it as both singular or plural. Grammar girl for a source that agrees with the explanation.
It's good to know about compound adjectives and nouns but that's not really answering the question, and it's not really as simple as "you want to put a comma separating more adjectives than two."
There are coordinate adjectives, for which you should use a comma to separate more than one, and cumulative adjectives, for which commas shouldn't be used.
> Coordinate adjectives are two or more adjectives that describe the same noun equally. For example: The long, metal pole. "Long" and "metal" are both adjectives that describe the noun "pole" > > Cumulative adjectives build on each other and cannot be re-ordered or split with "and," for example: bright yellow jacket. It can't be "bright and yellow jacket" or "yellow bright jacket".
https://prowritingaid.com/grammar/1008103/Should-I-use-a-comma-between-two-adjectives
> The rulebooks tell us to put commas between coordinate adjectives, but it is not always easy to tell when adjectives are coordinate. Apply two simple tests to be sure: > > First, place the word and between the two adjectives. Second, reverse them. If, in both instances, the resulting phrase still sounds appropriate, we are most likely dealing with coordinate adjectives and should use a comma between them.
https://getitwriteonline.com/articles/commas-between-adjectives/
This site demonstrates examples of your form. It is grammatical, if not a commonly formed syntax.
It is acting as as postposed adjective that has an elided to-phrase. "A couple of weeks prior [to October/the start of school/the death of John]"
That link shows that we do form "time prior" without the to-phrase enough that this is fine.
That said, if your teacher doesn't like it, I suggest just listening ;)
> the general trend appears to be that this is gaining in popularity
It depends on context, though. I predict a healthy long life for "I wouldn't do that if I were you," although it may at some point be considered a quaint idiom.
As for the overall trend, "if I was" has been gaining ground in the last 50 years or so, but strikingly, it was (slightly) more frequent than "if I were" at various moments in the 18th century, specifically in American English.
It may be “gotten” in certain British dialects and people get used to it with American English so much on TV. But in standard British English the common usage is definitely “got”.
You can see the relative use on Google nGrams:
For American English
And for British English
That's not how it is normally used.
Usually, you see examples like these (from my link)
> These people are educated to respond directly to laboratory situations with reports couched in the technical language of theories.
> The fact that the laws in the Book of the Covenant are couched in masculine language does not mean that those laws would not have applied to women also.
> Many of the arguments opposing organ donation (especially those from the newly dead) are couched in terms of symbols.
I can't find a single example of "couched with" with the meaning that you intend.