grammatical number - Which is correct: The rest of the staff is or are? The rest of my family is or are?

I hope you can enlighten me. I get varying answers in Google and I need to find out which is the correct grammatical structure for these sentences.

The rest of the staff is/are on leave at the moment.

The rest of my family is/are arriving late.

Is "As a member of a rescue team" a dependent clause and does it therefore warrant a comma after it?

I want to know whether the sentence

As a member of the rescue team, I had a terrifying experience.

is correct with the comma after the "as"-clause.

From my understanding it boils down to the question whether the phrase "As a member of the rescue team" is a dependent clause. Other questions tackle other clauses (like "in"- or "for"-phrases), but I want to know whether "as"-clauses are dependent

If so, rule 2 from COMMA SUTRA: 13 rules for using commas applies and the comma is correct.

Answer

Yes, it's a dependent clause—and, because it's going first, there should be a comma after it.

From "Commas with Subordinate Clauses—A Reader’s Question" at The Editor's Blog, Beth Hill says the following:

An adverbial clause often starts with a subordinating conjunction. A short list of subordinating conjunctions:

      although
      after
      as
      because
      before
      once
      since
      though
      until
      when
      while

A subordinate clause that stands alone is a sentence fragment . . . While we can use dependent clauses as sentence fragments, most of the time we don’t. We usually pair them with at least one independent clause and create sentences . . . Independent clauses often come first in our text, but putting dependent clauses first gives us variety in sentence construction . . .

When an adverbial dependent clause comes before the independent clause, we put a comma after the dependent clause (between the clauses). We don’t have to give any consideration to the topic of essential or nonessential—when the dependent clause comes before the independent, use a comma to separate them.

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Note that it's a dependent clause because it wouldn't make sense on its own unless it were in response to what somebody else said:

"As a member of the rescue team."
"Sorry, what?"

      but

"In what capacity did have a terrifying experience?"
"As a member of the rescue team."

In short, in order for it to be meaningful in any way, it has to have context—either within a dialogue or linked to an independent clause in the same sentence.

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In order to address some comments, I interpret as in this sentence in the same sense as because or since.

From Merriam-Webster's seventh sense of the conjunction:

7 : for the reason that : BECAUSE, SINCE
// stayed home as she had no car

I also take there to be an elided (but implied) verb.

Therefore, the sentence could be rephrased like this:

(Because / Since) [I was] a member of the rescue team, I had a terrifying experience.

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It's also possible to interpret as in Merriam-Webster's fifth sense:

5 : WHILE, WHEN
// spilled the milk as she got up

Or:

(While / When) [I was] a member of the rescue team, I had a terrifying experience.

---

In either of these interpretations, as functions as part of a subordinate clause in a synonymous sense with one of the other words.

Can last names be shortened just as first names?

I know first names are usually shortened in verbal communication for reasons that I am not clear about. For example, Andrew becomes Andy.

But is it also the case for last names? If yes, what is the reason? Is it polite or impolite? For example, if I am correct, I heard once that Robinson is shortened to Robin by a third person in the US.

Answer

Shortened versions of surnames (last names) are often used as nicknames in English-speaking countries, but normally by people on very familiar terms with the person and therefore not in quite the same way as Robert might be shortened to Bob or Steven to Steve.

In my experience (predominantly British English) longer surnames such as Robinson and Brightman might be shortened to Robbo or Brighty or even extended from one sylable to two with the addition of an "o" or "y", e.g. Brown to Browny.

I would emphasise that this isn't something that would happen outside relatively close circles of friends, teammates or colleagues.

Punctuation of reported speech within direct speech

I've got a fiction 'speech within speech' situation, and I'd like opinions on how to handle the internal final punctuation -- inside or outside the quotes. This is British English.

Example: The character says:

[Statement A]

"Oh no, he always brings that up, ‘Just like the last time, it’ll be,’ he says, never lets me touch a drop."

Problem: in British English that comma after "be" would go outside the final single quote mark if it wasn't direct speech, ie., if an omniscient narrator says:

[Statement B]

John was liable to say "Just like last time, it'll be", or something like that, which annoyed her.

So, in the first example, A, does my character qualify as a surrogate omniscient narrator? In which case the comma should go outside the single quote? Or does the interior quote qualify as a reporting direct speech, in which case the comma stands as I've rendered it, inside the single quote?

punctuation - Comma before which

I'm not sure which of the following sentences is correct. Is the comma mandatory, optional or unnecessary? I've googled a bit about this topic, but I got confused.

Our mapping contains 2000 words, which map to more than one lemma.

or

Our mapping contains 2000 words which map to more than one lemma.

Context: In total, there are more than 2000 words.

I've read Is it appropriate to put a comma before "which"? . If I understand the answers correctly, my "which map to more than one lemma" is a defining clause and no comma is required. But is it wrong to add one?

When is dropping the definite (or indefinite) article permissible and why?

I seem to be obsessed with those today.

Okay, here goes:

From The Ballad of Reading Gaol, by Oscar Wilde:

And I and all the souls in pain,
Who tramped the other ring,
Forgot if we ourselves had done
A great or little thing,
And watched with gaze of dull amaze
The man who had to swing.

From The Raven, by Edgar Allan Poe:

Open here I flung the shutter,
when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore;
Not the least obeisance made he;
not a minute stopped or stayed he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door—
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door—
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

Most native speakers here would know these two poems by heart (and, I suspect, some non-native ones would too): we read them over and over and commit them to memory as kids. It would not therefore be immediately obvious to everyone that the articles are missing. But they are. How is this justified?

word choice - Which is correct — "a year" or "an year"?

The word year when pronounced starts with a phonetic sound of e which is a vowel sound making it eligible for being preceded by an. Yet, we tend to write a year. Why?

Answer

I reject your premise that the word year starts with a phonetic sound of e. Here's how it is pronounced according to the various dictionaries:

• Wiktionary: (RP) IPA: /jiə/, /jɜː/, SAMPA: /ji@/, /j3:/; (US) enPR: yîr, IPA: /jiɹ/, SAMPA: /jir/


• Merriam-Webster: \ˈyir\


• American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language: /yîr/


• Collins English Dictionary: /jɪə/

Words that start with the /j/ sound are preceded by an a, not by an an. Compare: a user, a utility, a yak.

pronunciation - schwa before /r/

Right now, Wikipedia gives the pronunciation of Sirius as /ˈsɪriəs/, but in the past I've seen editors insist on /ˈsɪəriəs/. I take this to mean that it should sound like seer, which I at least pronounce with two syllables, but I don't pronounce Sirius like that.

The question was brought to my mind again by a question about pronunciations of Ouroboros, giving one variant as /jʊərɵˈbɒrəs/, again with a (to me) spurious schwa between a lax high vowel and a following /r/.

Is it a dialect difference that these look wrong to me? Or am I deaf to a sound that exists also in my own dialect (edumacated General American) because my theory says it's not there?

How would these words sound different without the schwa?

In dialects that require a schwa here, does it apply to all vowels?

pronunciation - How to pronounce "worried"?

I have no idea whatsoever about IPA, so I apologise now for any ambiguity or difficult-to-understand-ness in this question.

Me and a friend both disagree on the correct pronunciation of "worried". I pronounce it "worried", he pronounces it "wurried". I shall expand:

1. My pronunciation: if you will, rhymes with "lorry". Lorry, worry (woh-reed)


2. His pronunciation: if you will, rhymes with "curry". Curry, worry (wu-reed, wuh-reed)

Once again, I apologise if you think these explanations are awful, but they were the best I could do.

(We speak standard English, at least I think we do). We have no northern, western, midlands etc. accents. We come from the south east, if that's of any help.

I'm also not passing the fact that they could both be correct and that it doesn't matter, but it'd be interesting to know which one is correct.

Answer

In North America, worry most often rhymes with furry, blurry, and slurry. That’s the same vowel as in fur, blur, and slur ’round these parts. This is also the same vowel as the one in yer, per, purr, her, sir, sure, fir, burr, knur, slur, whirr, and were. In fact our worry sounds pretty much just like “were” with an extra -y tacked on to the end. Now just add a d for worried, and you’re done.

In contrast, the North American worry usually does not rhyme with any of sorry, quarry, lorry, berry, bury, curie, carry, Carrie, dairy, ferry, glory, Rory, story, cherry, Terry, tarry, very, wary, weary, marry, merry, Mary, Harry, or Laurie — nor even with Larry, Moe, or Curly.

Lastly, the North American worry almost certainly does not rhyme with an Indian sari.

Beyond that, your mileage may, can, will, and surely shall vary. And why sure, I could give you the IPA for my version of worry and worried (respectively /ˈwɜɹi/ and /ˈwɜɹid/), but you said you don’t understand IPA symbols. This makes it next to impossible to talk about pronunciations, because you have no symbolic way of specifying pronunciations. That’s probably why you’ve received no answers yet.

However, even if you did know what the IPA symbols actually meant, they might not do you as much good as you might think: many of those words themselves have multiple possible pronunciations, depending on various mergers and regional accents.

The best I can do is give you rhyme-sets, but mine and thine are surely miles, leagues, and even oceans apart, so what good would that do you if I did? So I can’t tell you how you “should” pronounce worry, per your request. Then again, nobody else can do that either, so I don’t feel so bad.

At best, I can only tell you how I do so. Which is what I’ve tried to do.
I guarantee you that many people reading this won’t pronounce all / many / some / any of these the way I myself do anyway. So please don’t think I expect you to pronounce it like me, of course; I expect you to pronounce it like worry. :)

All joking aside, I don’t know what more you are looking for here. You may wish to update your question a bit so that it can be answered.

definite articles - Why is the word "the" used before different categories of calculus?

I've noticed that, when referring to certain branches of calculus, mathematicians sometimes precede the name of those branches with the word "the". For example, "the lambda calculus" or "the predicate calculus".

To be fair, a Google search turns up plenty of references to "lambda calculus" (without "the" as a prefix). But it also turns up an equally large number of references to the phrase with the prefix included. Further, I haven't noticed this with other branches of math. For example, I haven't heard anyone use the phrase "the linear algebra" or "the Euclidean geometry". They just say "linear algebra" or "Euclidean geometry".

My question is, why the difference?

EDIT:

As requested by @Lawrence in the comments, here are some examples of full sentences where "the" is used before "calculus":

1) "The λ-calculus can be called the smallest universal programming language in the world. The λ-calculus consists of a single transformation rule (variable substitution, also called β-conversion) and a single function definition scheme. It was introduced in the 1930s by Alonzo Church as a way of formalizing the concept of effective computability."
Source- https://arxiv.org/pdf/1503.09060.pdf

2) "Church (1936) invented a formal system called the lambda calculus and

defined the notion of computable function via this system." Source- http://www.cse.chalmers.se/research/group/logic/TypesSS05/Extra/geuvers.pdf

3) "The Lambda calculus is an abstract mathematical theory of computation, involving functions. The lambda calculus can be thought of as the theoretical foundation of functional programming." Source- https://brilliant.org/wiki/lambda-calculus/

In response to @Trevor's comment, we can replace "Euclidean geometry" with "boolean algebra", meaning we're now comparing two types of algebra (linear and boolean). I haven't heard either of these genres of algebra used with "the" as a prefix, yet they're both 2 sub-branches of the same branch of mathematics.

I'm able to find the phrase "the linear algebra" as part of a broader phrase (i.e. "The Linear Algebra Survival Guide" or "The Linear Algebra Behind Search Engines"), but the usage of the phrase in these examples is different from the usage in the examples I mentioned in response to Lawrence's comment.

grammatical number - When to use the plural of "nature"?

Someone told me that the word nature should not be plural in my sentence. I would argue, however, that it is obvious that it requires an "s". The problematic sentence is as follow:

We must exploit constraints of different natures (temporal, logical, etc.) [...]

If I replace the word nature by type, type would be plural. However, if I am correct, the word nature is a case similar to the word information. In French, I would put an s to the word information in this sentence:

There is a lot of information to process

Can someone help me clarify this? Is there a simple and general rule for the words like information and nature? When must they be plural?

Answer

Singletons -- things of which there are only one -- are not usually pluralized.

If you were using nature in the sense of "the material world, excluding human activities" there is only one, and it could not be pluralized.

However your meaning is that of a "kind, sort, or character" which certainly can be pluralized.

grammaticality - "Two and two makes four" vs. "two and two make four"

1. Two and two makes four.


2. Two and two make four.

Which is grammatical? Please provide your reasoning.

Using determiners with articles

I was studying articles when I came across the following statement:

There are other special modifiers called determiners or markers that may appear in front of a noun phrase. Do not use an article if you also intend to use any of the following markers directly before the noun: this, that, these, those, my, his, her, your, our, their, its, any, either, each, every, many, few, several, some, all. (http://www.writing.utoronto.ca/advice/english-as-a-second-language/articles)

However, I'm not sure about "all" because I came across phrases that included articles between "all" and the nouns. For example - "all the countries", "all the way", etc...

I would appreciate if anyone can clarify what the blockquote means and explain if there are exceptions.

Thanks

On the usage of "the" article with acronyms and initialisms

I've read Using the definite article with acronyms and initialisms and Is it appropriate to use "the" before an abbreviation? I know that

1. The article is often used with initials that are pronounced letter by letter (initialisms).

2. The article is often NOT used with initials that are pronounced as a word (acronyms).

I used 'often' because I'm not sure about possible exceptions.

In my field of study (Operations Research), initials are frequently used to represent optimization problems (e.g., the TSP). I discussed this point with my university supervisor who makes comments on my reports (English is not his native language). He responded that:

"What I learned from [...] was that whenever we use (specific) acronyms, we don't use 'the' when they are within a sentence, and we use 'the' when a sentence starts with them. For instance,

(i) The HCP is an NP-Complete problem.

(ii) We developed a new algorithm to solve HCP."

HCP stands for the Hamiltonian Cycle Problem. It is really confusing me because I do not know when to use and when not to use the article. For example, on this site, the author Jane Watson writes:

Use a definite article with an initialism if the spelled out term begins with “the” but is not covered in the initialism.

which implies that I should use the article with "HCP". What do you think?

Answer

Sadly What I learned from [...] was that whenever we use (specific) acronyms, we don't use 'the' when they are within a sentence, and we use 'the' when a sentence starts with them indicates rather more about his use of it, than about English.

Is it not wholly irrelevant whether the acronym starts or is within a sentence? If the full-out phrase, in this case the Hamiltonian Cycle Problem needs an article then so does the abbreviation… except where the author can demonstrate how that article is included in the abbreviation.

(i) The HCP… seems correct by itself; is an NP-Complete problem contributes nothing.

(ii) … to solve HCP seems to be lacking an article, whichever that be.
Please consider a rather different example of MP meaning Member of Parliament.

The crucial point here is that Joe Soap, who is MP works only in a very few, very specific circumstances; otherwise it fails solely because it has no article.

Joe Soap, who is MP for Piddlington does work in both abbreviated and full forms.

Joe Soap, who is the MP for Piddlington does work in both abbreviated and full forms.

Joe Soap, who is an MP does work - even though using an for the abbreviation almost contradicts the ordinary use of a for the full version.

Joe Soap, who is a MP doesn’t work in abbreviation even tough it should work with the full form, Member of Parliament.

grammar - Is it ok to write "as if it was"?

I just read this sentence and was wondering if it is okay to write it like this.

You can use your device worldwide, as if it was directly connected to your
PC.

Are there better alternatives for writing this sentence? Maybe:

You can use your device worldwide, just like it is directly connected to your

PC.

jokes - Ending a sentence with a preposition?

Recently in an episode of 'House of cards' they bring up the joke

"Two freshmen girls are moving into their dorm room together. One of them's from Georgia, one of them's from Connecticut. The girl from Connecticut's helping her mother put up curtains. Girl from Georgia turns to them and says, "Hi. Where y'all from?" Girl from Connecticut says, "We're from a place where we know not to end a sentence with a preposition." The girl from Georgia says, "Oh, beg my pardon. Where y'all from...cunt?"

Now, i suppose the punchline has something to do with the not-preposition, but what i don't get is why the Connecticut girl even considers that a sentence cannot end with a preposition?
Is there any reason for stating that prepositions can't be on the end of a sentence? And if not, what is the punchline of this joke?

If this joke's punchline is not pertaining to English language or if this is not a grammatical joke, i'm sorry and will remove the question.

Answer

If you Google for "end sentence with preposition", you will get a ton of links, most of which will explain "one should not end a sentence with a preposition" is a mythical rule that in fact does not describe English usage, but is nevertheless sometimes (or even often) mistakenly quoted as fact.

This article tells a bit about the history of the rule - in short, that it started in 1672 with a certain John Dryden, who claimed it to be an abominable practice but never gave any indication why he thought so. It is generally considered to be applying Latin grammar rules to English text, which makes as much sense as a pancake on a bunny's head.

The joke is recognising this fact, and making fun of the pseudointellectual pedants who cite this "rule" seriously.

grammar - Relative and demonstrative pronouns "that" and "those"

I think the sentence

the difference between the behaviour of young people today and that of those in the past

is correct, as that (relative pronoun) replaces behaviour and those (demonstrative pronoun) refers to young people.

Can we also say:

the difference between the behaviour of young people today and the one of yesterday (or and the one of youth in the past)

Can you help me explain why the first one is correct. I can't quite construct the argument, but I know the first example is correct, whilst I'm not sure the second example (using one instead of that to refer to the behaviour) is correct in this case.

meaning - "our bodies lose their rhythm" vs. "our body loses its rhythm"

In this above situation, the question is that “What happens if we change our sleep pattern often?” and my brother had to fill in the blanks.

A: ______ ______ ______ ______ ______ .

So he answered, “Our bodies lose their rhythm.”.

But his teacher said the answer was wrong. The correct answer which she wants is

“Our body loses its rhythm.”

My brother’s answer is wrong?
I would like to know if this answer is incorrect or not and if not, what is the difference in meaning between them.

formality - When is first person okay in formal writing?

I read that in college applications some questions are fine to use first person. An example of a prompt that would use first person is here: to prevent dead links it follows this question. I have been told several times to never use first person in formal writing. Is it fine to use first person on formal essays where the prompt is about you?

Describe a topic, idea, or concept you find so engaging that it makes you lose all track of time. Why does it captivate you? What or who do you turn to when you want to learn more?

When to use a gerund or an infinitive after "is"?

How does one know when to use a gerund or an infinitive? states a 90% rule, but I'm more interested in the remaining 10%.

This British Council page states

Sorry, there isn’t a rule. You have to learn which verbs go with which

pattern.

and then lists some verbs, after which the correct form applies.

But what about these two examples (if I got it right)?

My dream is to become a doctor.

My hobby is listening to music.

Why does one take a gerund, and the other an infinitive? What is the rule?

Answer

Unfortunately, the linked answer is very vague, and not correct. It does point out correctly that gerunds are more common as subjects than infinitives. But it certainly doesn't provide any rule that works.

The British Council is right.
It depends on the predicate in every case, and often both are OK.

The examples given are both correct, and illustrate a difference between infinitives and gerunds:

• My dream is to become a doctor.
  (to become a doctor describes a punctual result, with a changed situation as an outcome)


• My hobby is listening to music.
  (listening to music describes a generic durative activity, an experiential event)

Infinitives are more complex than gerunds, and they roughly point to different kinds of sentence:

As McCawley 1998 puts it (p.126)
Roughly speaking,
• that-complements correspond to propositions
• for-to complements [infinitives] correspond to situation types
• 's-ing complements [gerunds] correspond to events

This is the reason why infinitives are less common as subjects. Events are causes, and causes are old information; situations are normally results, and therefore new information. And the English sentence normally presents the old information first and the new information last. That's not a grammatical rule -- it's just the usual tendency.

And in this case, note how the sentences fare when reversed:

• ??To become a doctor is my dream.



• Listening to music is my hobby.

The predicate be X's dream here refers to X's personal desire for a particular situation, rather than an activity that X participates in. The opposite is true for the predicate be X's hobby, which specifies an activity, but no result. So the infinitive is uncomfortable as a subject in the first sentence -- it's result, not cause; but the gerund is fine.

Are past perfect and simple past interchangeable when describing events that happen for some time in the past?

I'm using an exercise from the Purdue Owl to understand tense usage. The exercise, which uses an excerpt from Alex Haley's Roots, can be found here: https://owl.english.purdue.edu/exercises/2/22/51

Here's the sentence I'm having trouble with: "Since my forefather had said his name was Kin-tay (properly spelled Kinte), and since the Kinte clan was known in Gambia, the group of Gambians would see what they could do to help me."

In this case, Haley uses both the past perfect (had said) to indicate something that started sometime in the past and continued up to another time in the past and the simple past (was) to describe something that was true for some time in the past. It seems to me that in this case, the past perfect and simple past tense are interchangeable. Haley could just as easily written "since my forefather said his name was Kin-tay" or "the Kinte clan had been known," although the latter example wouldn't have been as graceful. Are these two tenses sometimes interchangeable? Or is it a matter of duration? Have I missed something?

Answer

In the sentence you present:

"Since my forefather had said his name was Kin-tay (properly spelled Kinte), and since the Kinte clan was known in Gambia, the group of Gambians would see what they could do to help me."

The use of "had said" indicates that the forefather's action was already in the past at the time of the events then being described by the narrator. If you wrote instead "Since my forefather said his name was Kin-tay [...]" then the natural out-of-context interpretation would be that the forefather was present and gave his name in that moment, thereby directly influencing the Gambians to help. That the reader will recognize that interpretation to be impossible doesn't make it ok to substitute "said" for "had said" here; although the reader might understand the author's intent, the conflict between context and natural interpretation would be dissonant.

Are these two tenses sometimes interchangeable? Or is it a matter of duration? Have I missed something?

No, they are not interchangeable. It is a matter of the relative timing of events. When describing (simple) past events, one uses the past perfect to place actions in a more distant past time frame.

meaning - What's the difference between "my love" and "my lover"?

What's the difference between "my love" and "my lover" ? Or do they have the same meaning ?

Answer

'Lover' implies a sexual relationship. 'Love' does not, at least not necessarily.

You could call your lover your love with no problems arising. But if your love is, say, your child, you wouldn't want to call your love your lover!

The word Hindu in American English

I, as an Indian, am often surprised when the Americans use the word Hindu, when they actually mean

1. The country of India


2. The Indian subcontinent


3. The Hindi language (possibly)

whereas it should only refer to the Hindu religion, or Hinduism.

For example, there is the Hindu-German conspiracy of 1915. While most of the Indian conspirators may have been Hindu, it does not appear to have been religiously motivated.

An American cousin of mine wanted a 'Hindu Barbie' in a sari. It sounded inaccurate, at least to my years. Occasionally, I have heard an Indian accent being referred to as a 'Hindu accent'. To my ear, this sounds as ridiculous as an accent being referred to as, say, a Catholic accent, a Baptist accent, or a Jewish accent.

The British do not usually do this, but I did see an old (1930s) film where the actor claimed that a nonsense word was 'Hindu' for welcome.

What is the reason for this usage? I did hear one possible explanation. A friend of mine visiting South America took exception to this usage. Upon enquiring, he was told that the word 'Hindu' refers to 'Indian Indians', while 'Indian' refers to native South Americans.

Was this the case in the USA as well?

How common is this usage? Is it universal, or only among the poorly educated? Why don't people say South Asian, or Indian, or the subcontinent, depending on the context?

To be fair to the Americans, the words and phrases Hindu, Hinduism, India, Indus, Sindh, Sindhu, Hindi, Hindostan, Hindu Kush, etc all have the same origin.

However, non-Hindu South Asians, including Indians, and even some secular Hindus may be offended by such usage.

possessives - Bayes' Theorem or Bayes's Theorem? (Similarly, Charles' Law or Charles's Law?)

Which one is correct?
I thought the latter would be correct but apparently the former is always used; why?

Edit:

Another (confusing) example: Charles'(s?) law

Killer Queen. The usage of noun sequences of length two and more. Ambiguity of nouns phrases in English

I have a question about nouns triplets like "sofa box container" and I'll formulate it at the end. I have some reasoning and I want to make sure I'm correct.

First of all consider the following sample. Common sense helps understand the meaning of these words but I want to know the general rule for understanding the meaning of noun sequences.

1. Spider man — a man who is also a spider


2. Killer Queen — a queen who is also a killer



3. Blade Runner — a man who runs on the blade


4. Tiger lily — lily of "tiger" type

These are well-known examples. But I suppose the first two should be written with hyphen: spider-man, killer-queen.

Following the logic I tried to create sensible examples of 2-nouns combinations:

Killer queen — a queen of killers
Killer's queen — a queen, who is killer's
Killer-queen — a killer who is also a queen
Queen-killer — a queen who is also a killer
Queen killer — a killer of queens
Queen's Killer — a killer, who is queen's

Blade runner — 1) a runner who is like a blade (blade as adjective) — 2) someone or something who makes the blade run
Blade's runner — the runner of blade's property
Blade-runner — a blade who is a runner (blade and also a runner)
Runner-blade — a runner who is a blade (runner and also a blade)
Runner blade — 1) something that blades (verb) a runner — 2) a blade of type runner (what kind of blade? — runner)
Runner's blade — a blade of runner's property

Suppose we have 2 nouns A and B. The possible combinations of these nouns are:

A B
A's B
A-B
B-A
B's A
B A

Now the question:
How do I interpret combinations of length more than two?
What does "sofa box container" mean? Is it "boxes containing sofas" or "container of boxes where sofas were inside"? And does "sofa container box" mean "boxes which contain sofas" or "a box for a container of sofas"? Any other versions?

And finally, how do I say without prepositions "the machines which contain databases"?

I'm so confused by noun sequences. Any help is greatly appreciated!

Answer

English is not unambiguous, so there is no absolute rule. However, generally speaking the last noun is modified by the preceding nouns. "Sofa box container", has container as the last word, so it refers to a container, and the type of container is one for a sofa box.

When you hyphenate the meaning doesn't change much, so, from your example:

Queen-killer — a queen who is also a killer

Is not correct, a "queen-killer" is a person who kills queens. The hyphen just tightens the relationship.

The emphasis is the same with the genitive but the relationship is a little more ambiguous:

Queen's killer

Can mean a lot of things, the two most obvious candidates being a killer who works for the queen or a person who killed the queen. Nonetheless, the rule still applies, it is a killer, and the type of killer is "queen's".

So the bottom line is that usually the last word is the main word, the rest are modifiers.

For your example, database containing machines would be appropriate, since the main subject is the machine, and the rest say what type of machine. In this particular instance though the idiom would be just plain database machines, or database servers.

Possesive pronoun to use with the interrogative pronoun

When using the interrogative pronoun, 'who', what would the possessive form be?

'Who checks X letterbox every day?'.

I feel it ought to be 'his' but some people I know claim it should be 'their', which to me seems to contradict the singular form of the verb 'check'.

'Who checks his letterbox every day?' is what I would say naturally.
'Who checks their letterbox every day?' sounds a bit off to me.

Looking on the internet doesn't really return anything useful, only the use of 'their' as a singular pronoun, which seems to be somewhat popular a topic.

Note, this is specifically regarding the interrogative pronoun; I understand the debate about his/her/their/ones in other circumstances but I want to know whether the same can apply to 'who' or 'whom'.

meaning - "A mystery" vs. "mysterious"

When you say:

His motive (for the crime he committed) remained a mystery.

It doesn't sound the same if you change "a mystery" to "mysterious" as if the two words didn't have the same meaning. Please correct me if I am wrong.

Another example is:

‘I quickly went over to the desk and starting sifting through the
papers, looking for a clue to the identity of our mystery guest.’

If you Google search them, you have 718,000 hits for "mystery guest" and 142,000 for "mysterious guest". I assume there has to be a reason for that.

‘A mysterious benefactor provided the money’

In the above example, it sounds like it is OK to use "mystery" in place of "mysterious" (personal opinion). However, you get only 17,000 hits for "mystery benefactor" and 135,000 hits for "mysterious benefactor", which is 8 times more. The usage of "mysterious benefactor" seems quite differnt from "mystery guest".

[Oxford Online Dictionary]

Questions:

1. In the first example, "a mystery" looks like it is functioning as an adjective with a different connotation from "mysterious". Is it impossible to say "His motive remained mysterious"? Is it just idiomatic (just the way it is)?




2. In the second and third examples, what happens if I use "mysterious" in place of "a mystery" or vice versa? Why do you think there is such a big difference in Google hits?

Please don't asnwer with "that's the way it is".

Thank you.

Answer

I believe that the phrase "mystery guest" was popularized by the US television show What My Line?, in which a panel must guess the occupation of contestants (called "guests") by asking them yes-or-no questions. The last guest was a celebrity, and the panelists had to wear blindfolds and also guess the identity of the guest. The celebrity was called the "mystery guest." The show first aired on February 2, 1950, which predates the earliest use found in Ngrams. (Except for names recorded in registers of breeding livestock. Go figure.)

The identity of the mystery guest was a mystery only to the blind-folded panelists: the person was both well known and visible to the audience. So when you apply the word mystery to a person, it means that he or she is unknown to you, i.e., the only secret is their identity. On the other hand, when you call a person mysterious, you're talking about the person's inexplicable and unexplainable motives, intentions, behaviors, etc. Note that the enigmatic need not be anonymous -- the identity of mysterious persons may be known to you, so they needn't be mystery persons as well.

prescriptive grammar - When do we not use definite article, "the"?

I have a question. Could you please explain why “the” is not used in the parts that I have indicated in bold? Why is "the" missing?

Little is known about the lives of early human beings. What we do know has been gathered through the study of ancient caves that scientists called archeologists believe early humans probably lived in.
The evidence suggests that the first human beings lived in caves along the southern coast of Africa. This region provided ample supplies of food as well as a warm climate.

The text above is from https://kidspast.com/world-history/prehistoric-humans/

capitalization - When referring to the capitalised version of letter in text, should uppercase or lowercase be used?

In practice, which would be correct: "Does the word begin with a capital m?" or "Does the word begin with a capital M"?

In that situation I'm minded to use M, because that's what I'm referring to, but to ask " Does the word begin with an uppercase or lowercase _?" is not so obvious.

grammar - Should there be a comma after 'and'?

This is a bit of a strange question because I know that there should never ever be a comma after 'and.' But what if there's a parenthetical statement/clause-thing right after it? Let me demonstrate.

She spread her arms, tilted her head back, and, closing her eyes, let the sun warm her face.

Should it be:

She spread her arms, tilted her head back, and closing her eyes, let the sun warm her face.

I feel like the ,and, looks really bulky, but I also feel it's necessary to separate the statement between the commas. Help?

Answer

Basically, "there should never ever be a comma after 'and'" is wrong. What you should think instead is that commas do not belong after 'and' in a list:

• I bought eggs, milk, and, bread. (Wrong! So very wrong!)

and commas also do not belong after using 'and' as a coordinating conjunction:

• The first sentence is wrong and, this one is too. (Also very wrong!)

However, commas are used around a parenthetical:

• I, having written both of these terrible sentences, sincerely apologize.

and that is exactly what is happening in your example. The comma is allowed. It is not, however, necessary, because it is at the very start of "closing her eyes, let the sun warm her face" (the final item in your list). It's not needed for the same reason you don't need a comma at the beginning of this sentence:

• Closing my eyes, I hit "Post Your Answer".

grammaticality - Is "there're" (similar to "there's") a correct contraction?

Q: "Do you have any juice?"
A: "Yes, there's some in the fridge."

Sounds perfectly fine to me, but:

Q: "Do you have any towels?"
A: "Yes, there's some in the closet."

Does not.

I asked for towels - plural - so wouldn't "Yes, there're some in the closet," in which there are is turned into a contraction be the correct way to say it?

Spellcheck, however, doesn't like "there're", and I think I'm the only person I've ever heard use the word "there're". Even folks who I know say "there are" shorten it to "there's" when possible.

Am I saying it wrong, or are both forms acceptable?

Answer

There're is common in speech, at least in certain dialects, but you'll rarely see it written. If I were being pedantic, I'd advise you to use there are in your example, because there is is definitely wrong, so there's could be considered wrong as well. But a huge number of English speakers, even those that are well-educated, use there's universally, regardless of the number of the noun in question, so you will probably not receive any odd looks for saying or writing there's, and if you do, just cite the fact that it can't be incorrect if a majority of people use it. As for me (a native New Englander), I use both, but may use there's in place of there're if I'm speaking quickly.

grammar - Tense in clauses and how tense operates in my head

I have a question I am confused about. Here is the question:

(1)"I want to travel around so that I can write where I will go and what I will do in my blog."

(2)"I want to travel around so that I can write where I went and what I did in my blog."

I used different tenses in these two sentences. Which one is correct?

And how about this one:

(1)"I want to do an internship so that I can write what I'll do through the experience on my resume."

(2)"I want to do an internship so that I can write what I did through the experience on my resume."

Which one is correct?

And this one:

(1)"He is going to write a book next year, and he will give me the book which he will write."

(2)"He is going to write a book next year, and he will give me the book which he wrote."

which one is correct?

When it comes this case (seeing things from the future), how should one use the tense in clauses correctly? If you guys can explain how to use the proper tense in these kinds of sentences, it will be great!

From my point of view, I think those sentences labeled as (1) sound more correct to me, but I am not sure about it.

Below, I explain how I think of English tenses. Could you tell me whether my thought is correct?

I think the tenses of English language are all relative to the present (the moment I speak).
That means things we want to talk about need to be compared with the present in order to know which tense we should use. Despite the fact that past perfect can be relative to the past, it is also relative to the present; if not, it would be just past tense (if our datum mark is the time in the past). I mean that because datum mark is the present (the moment I speak), past perfect can be used as past perfect. It is a little hard to explain my thought, but I believe you guys can get my idea.

Answer

First Question

"...so that I can write where I will go and what I will do in my blog" sounds like you want to write about your future plans.

Using the present simple tense makes sense as your traveling can be considered regular or habitual (at least in your version of the future).

Using the past simple tense would give the impression that at the time you're stating this ("I want to travel around..."), you intend to write about your past trips. The conjunction "so that" seems strange (or some may say wrong) as it implies your ability to write about the past relies on your future traveling.

If you want to be more specific, you could say "I want to travel around so that I will be able to write where I will have gone and what I will have done".

The second question is similar to the first, so I'll skip it.

Third Question

1. "He is going to write a book next year, and he will give me the book which he will write." This sounds ok.




2. "He is going to write a book next year, and he will give me the book which he wrote." This also sounds ok, but it has a different meaning from the first one. The reference to "the book which he wrote" implies that this is a different book from the first "book" that appeared in the first part of the statement (which has not come into existence). The use of "and" sounds like you are answering a question asking what "he" will do. I can come up with an artificial context to make this statement somewhat sensible:

A: I heard that he finished writing a book last week and is now looking for a publisher. I had no idea he's taken up writing so seriously.

B: Right? And now he has asked me to help him find a publisher.

A: Have you read the book? Do you know what his plans are?

B: No, and not really. But at least I know he is going to write a book next year, and he will give me the book he wrote.

(Does this work? Kind of?)

Apostrophe or assume the possessive?

This question has divided the office into two camps. Camp 1 believes the correct way to indicate the relationship in this sentence is to use the client's name as a possessive, as in "When UltraGalactic's employees call the Customer Service line..." Camp 2 believes the apostrophe can be dropped because "UltraGalactic" is modifying "employees," and therefore the possessive is assumed. Frankly, I don't understand the uproar over typing two additional characters, but I'd appreciate your feedback.

capitalization - Should words be capitalized for being religious terms?

While googling about whether "atheist" should be capitalized, and skimming past posts by people blogging about atheism rather than about English grammar, I came across http://uwf.edu/writelab/reviews/capitalization/

It says

[Capitalize] Religions and religious terms

Examples:

Catholicism, Hinduism, Buddha, the Bible, Christian, the Ten
Commandments, Baptist church, Mt. Zion Methodist Church

NOTE: Do not capitalize the following:

Examples:

church, communion, atheist, agnostic, spirituality

but I don't recall hearing of such a prescription before. Wouldn't most of the examples listed be capitalized because they're proper nouns? Are there good examples of words being capitalized solely because they're religious terms?

I'm mainly interested in modern English, rather than days of past where a lot more words were capitalized than they are nowadays.

Somewhat related: When should the word "God" be capitalized? - use "God" when referring to the name of the god of Judaism and Christianity (a proper noun), but "god" when referring to the general concept of a deity (common noun).

Answer

Should words be capitalized for being religious terms?

Not necessarily. It depends on whether they’re considered proper names.

For example, church, communion, atheist, agnostic, and spirituality are not proper names because they’re not recognised entities.

In contrast, the Church of England is a proper name because it refers to an institution and should therefore be capitalised. However the church is not capitalised when you’re simply referring to a building rather than to the institution itself.

Holy Communion should be capitalised as a proper name; however, communion used as a general term should not be, because it isn’t a proper name.

early modern english - Why did the personal pronoun "you" "survive" and not the others?

I was just wondering, since we started talking about the Early Modern English Period, for England the period of Renaissance, Shakespeare ....

There were four cases in EMEnglish, thou (Subject case) thee (Object case)
ye (Subject case) you (Object case)

As far as I know "you" was used by lower class speakers to address higher class speakers.
And higher class speakers used thou in return to address lower class speakers (non-reciprocal)

I am not sure about the others but my question is why became the addressing reciprocal (using the same form to address each other) "you".
Why was it the "you" form that "survived" and not any other one?
Was is French influence from Middle English (when the Normans conquered England: has it something to do with the word "vous"?)

Thanks,

grammatical number - Why do we use plural for indefinite objects?

Building off another question I answered here, I couldn't justify why exactly we say:

I like to ride bicycles.

Instead of:

I like to ride a bicycle.

(This could be anything: "climb mountains", "fly helicopters", etc.)

Both of these forms should refer to some generic, indeterminate bicycle object. But we can't ride more than one at a time, nor do we mean to say that we like to ride them one after the other, so how does the plural form work here?

Even though the second example looks like a valid construction, it just doesn't sound right. I suspect it's because the indefinite article "a" adds something when used in this sense, instead of just meaning to say "a bicycle" in the generic sense, it implies:

I like to ride a (particular kind of bicycle).

However, "I like to ride my bicycle" works. Is it because "my" makes it less generic, or just because it means "the one that is mine"? So why does the indeterminate "a" not work in the same construction?

(The only sense where "a" seems to fit is when using the conditional: I would like to ride a bicycle. But again, this has a slightly different meaning than I would like to ride bicycles, in the general sense.)

How should I understand what's happening in these constructions?

Answer

The reason I like to ride a bicycle doesn't work is because the singular indefinite article implies there's just one particular bicycle you like riding.

When you say I like to ride bicycles there's an implied plural indefinite article there, but we discarded that word centuries ago. We're so used to not using it we don't even notice it's not there.

Even though the article is missing, we understand as if it were there; we don't suppose OP likes riding more than one bicycle at a time - he likes riding [some, most, many, all, any] bicycles.

I think the success of this usage encourages us to discard the singular definite article in various related contexts. So I like to play the piano, is increasingly giving way to I like to play piano (even more noticeably with the more modern I like to play guitar).

word usage - Reason for the current trend to use «she» as the gender-neutral pronoun?

There are some questions on gender-neutral pronouns both here and on Writers.

User Christine Letts writes:

In academia, there is currently a
movement toward using the feminine
pronoun at all times.

I wonder why that is. I came across several examples on papers I read, but the only one I can remember at the moment is a book: Seth Godin's Linchpin. While some might not be comfortable labeling it as part of academia, it suits my point perfectly. Every time he refers to a person, he uses the feminine pronoun.

User Senseful writes the following, potentially identifying affirmative action as the precursor for this trend.

I remember reading somewhere that it
was recommended to use the opposite of
what most people stereotype the
profession as. So, for example, when

talking about a chiropractor, you
would use "her", and when talking
about a secretary, you would use
"his".

So, where do you think this trend comes from?

Answer

This practice began round about the time of the feminist movement in the late 20th century(c.1980-c.1990)

Taken from the Free Online Dictionary:

Usage Note: Using she as a generic or gender-neutral singular pronoun is more common than might be expected, given the continuing debate regarding the parallel use of he. In a 1989 article from the Los Angeles Times, for instance, writer Dan Sullivan notes, "What's wrong with reinventing the wheel? Every artist has to do so in her search for the medium that will best express her angle of vision." Alice Walker writes in 1991, "A person's work is her only signature."

Wikipedia notes why:

One response to this (use of generic pronoun he) was an increase in the use of generic she in academic journal

What possessive forms are used for mutual 1st person ownership?

I want to talk to someone about the house that my wife and I own. Saying, for example, "My wife's and my house is awesome," sounds a bit funny to me. What's the best way to express this?

Clarification

I'm asking specifically about the grammar of multiple nouns in possessive form. I'm particularly curious if it's possible to do this with a first-person pronoun (me). I am capable of rephrasing this in other ways - my question is not how to express the idea, but about this particular grammatical construction, if it is even legal.

Answer

As far as I know, most style guides advise against this and say there is no acceptable solution without rephrasing the sentence, as most answers here have rightly done.

If the second possessor had been a noun, you could have stuck the possessive onto the second noun only. Note that this applies only if both possessors possess the same house together:

my sister and her husband's house

This is what the Chicago Manual of Style seems to suggest. I'd rephrase that too, though.

Should I use present tense in reporting speech?

Should I use present tense in reported speech? I have both sentences and not sure which one is correct:

• (1) Peter mentioned that the formula A is based on formula B.


• (2) Peter mentioned that the formula A was based on formula B.

Should I use present tense here as it is a fact (always)? However, it also makes sense by using past tense in reporting speech. Also, can the "that" be omitted?

Thanks!

Answer

1. Use the present if what Peter was trying to convey is about something being true in general or persistently (regardless of whether that something is in fact true in general...).

   
   
   

   This example is clearer, I think: Peter said the sky is blue -- vs -- Peter said the western sky was a particularly bright orange when the sun hit the horizon that evening.




2. Yes, you can remove that "that". But the sentence can be easier to understand, esp. by some non-native English speakers, if you leave it in. And esp. since you do not use "the formula B" here, you can say "... that formula A is based on formula B."

Take time and tense out of the question, to see what it means to make a general (and atemporal) statement (which one can make at any point in time). And no, quotation need not be involved either.

• Water is a colorless, transparent liquid. [general statement about the nature of water]



• The water in my glass is cloudy and brown. [specific statement about this water]




• Peter explained that water is a colorless, transparent liquid.



• Peter told the waiter that the water in his glass was cloudy and brown.

It is correct to say either of these:

• Ptolemy claimed that the Earth is at the center of the [solar] system.


• Ptolemy claimed that the Earth was at the center of the [solar] system.

They both say that Ptolemy made a general statement. Neither is incorrect. The former emphasizes the generality of what was claimed (including its abstraction from time). The latter emphasizes the claim as historical claim: the time-limited nature of its meaning.

IOW, it all depends on what you are really trying to say. This is about logic and meaning as much as it is about language (wording).

And FWIW, I agree 100% with this post about the same topic. Both can be correct, and there can be a slightly different connotation (emphasis) if you use one or the other. Neither is "awful".

grammar - How do I determine subject and subject complement in "A side-effect is the spread of commercialese to other domains."?

Consider this example:

Commercialese is an instrument of art,
designed to enrich and invigorate our
language—surely you will all agree
with this—, and we should encourage newcomers to learn it. However, a side-effect is the

spread of commercialese to other
domains. This we must object to,
because we need to keep this precious
instrument in our exclusive possession.

How do we determine what the subject complement is in the second sentence, "a side-effect" or "the spread"? In this case you might say it doesn't really matter.

[Edited]

Here are a few examples from Fowler's:

The only comment necessary ... is
that, when ... it makes no difference
to the meaning which of two words is
made the subject and which the
complement, the one that is placed
first must (except in questions) be
regarded as subject and have the verb

suited to its number: Our only guide
was the stars, or The stars were our
only guide. Such apparent exceptions
as Six months was the time allowed
for completion / The few days Mrs.
Kennedy will spend in London is in the
nature of a rest for her, are not
true ones, for here the complement
makes it clear that the subject,
though plural in form, is singular in

sense (*a period of — *).

So we are to take "six months" as singular because we can imagine it to be an attribute to an omitted, singular head noun, "a period of". But couldn't we imagine this for many other sentences? Consider "the stars were our only guide": I could say "the light of the stars was our only guide". So how is "six months" much different? Isn't there inversion at work here? And is there no way to pinpoint a subject, apart from its position before the verb?

Answer

First, note that "x is y" is not always logically equivalent to "y is x". For example, "Fools are my friends" is different from "My friends are fools" (because the first allows wise men to be my friends too, whereas the second does not); "All men are mortals" is very different from "Mortals are all men" :-)

That said, sometimes there is an equivalence, and some ideas can be expressed either way. In these cases the verb will agree with whichever you choose to make the subject ("One side-effect is headaches"; "Headaches are one side-effect").

(Note that in your examples, "**Our goal were the mountains" is wrong - in standard writing it should always be "Our goal was (complement)". But you could say "The mountains were our goal", with the same basic meaning but different emphasis.)

Addressing your second question: wholesale inversion of a "to be" sentence (where a sentence of the form "noun copula complement" changes to "complement copula noun") is rare, except for in specific situations:

• Questions (because English likes the question word to go first: "Who is Fred? Fred is the tall man"). The inversion always happens unless there's a specific reason not to (perhaps expressing surprise - "He's whose brother?")


• Certain comparative expressions ("Better still are the ones that follow"). The inversion here is optional ("The ones that follow are better still" is fine too).


• Expressions describing location. The simplest in this category are "There is...", "Here are..." and friends, but I'd also include in this category "Next to my house are two restaurants", "Found in every city are cars and buses". This inversion is optional.


• Poetic effect - either for emphasis, or for reasons of metre/rhyme ("Blessed are the meek" - the natural phrasing is "The meek are blessed"; the inversion serves to imply a very great level of blessedness; "Old King Cole was a merry old soul, and a merry old soul was he" - the inversion is clearly unnecessary but nicely fills up the line)

Note that in these situations (except possibly the last), it is usually very clear from the construction that the word or phrase at the start of the sentence is not the subject - often because it's an adjective or adverb phrase. In situations where the distinction is not so clear - such as the examples you provided - inversion will rarely if ever be used (since the sentence tends to end up sounding plain wrong, rather than inverted).

Do note that there are a large number of situations where a slightly different form of inversion ("noun verb complement" changing to "verb noun complement") is used - where it is forced or allowed by the use of certain forms or expressions. Examples such as "Is he tall?", "Never am I angry" are examples of this second kind. I won't attempt to enumerate these, because for one thing there are a lot of them, and for another I don't think the uncertainty you're concerned with arises here. In any case, here is a list of uses of inversion, that contains both types.

[Edit to respond to edit in question]

I have to agree with Fowler about the time periods: the "six months" is considered a single unit, so the singular is used; this is common when referring to measured quantities:

• Ten pounds is a small amount to pay.



• Two litres is more than enough.

We can tell that this is not inversion by using a verb where the ambiguity doesn't arise:

• Six months seems like an eternity.


• Five dollars buys me a very nice lunch.

We can construe the sentence like Fowler as meaning "A period of ...", "An amount of ...", or equivalently by considering the phrase as meaning "Six months of time", "Five pounds of money"; mentioning the uncountable noun makes the reason for the singular clearer, and distinguishes this case from the "light of the stars" case, where there's no obvious way to do the same.

(The plural can sometimes also be used in these cases, giving a sense of referring to each of the individual items mentioned "The six months are dragging on slowly" emphasises that every single one of them is felt.)

word choice - Which is correct: "__ is different from __" or "__ is different than __"?

As someone who learned English later on in life, I was taught that different from is the correct grammar to use: this is different from that. However, it seems these days everyone uses different than instead. I know it's incorrect usage, but does the language evolve if the majority wins?

Edit: Some commented different than is American English and different from is British English, both are OK. IMO, this isn't like color versus colour, though.

Than is used after a comparative adjective, e.g. taller than, whiter than. The word different isn't a comparative adjective, unless used in more different than. Logically, it makes no sense to say different than.

Answer

You left out the construction that makes the question more interesting: different to.

The quick answer is that "different from" is always correct and acceptable everywhere, but "different than" is common in US usage (as odd as it may seem for two things to be both different than the other), and "different to" is common in UK usage (as odd as it may seem to have both "different from" and "different to" mean the same thing).

Here's the useful alt.usage.english FAQ entry in its entirety:

"Different from" is the construction that no one will object to. "Different
to" is fairly common informally in the
U.K., but rare in the U.S. "Different
than" is sometimes used to avoid the
cumbersome "different from that
which", etc. (e.g., "a very different
Pamela than I used to leave all
company and pleasure for" -- Samuel
Richardson). Some U.S. speakers use

"different than" exclusively. Some
people have insisted on "different
from" on the grounds that "from" is
required after "to differ". But
Fowler points out that there are many
other adjectives that do not conform
to the construction of their parent
verbs (e.g., "accords with", but
"according to"; "derogates from", but
"derogatory to").

The Collins Cobuild Bank of English
shows choice of preposition after
"different" to be distributed as
follows:

                "from"  "to"    "than"
                -----   ----    ------
U.K. writing    87.6    10.8     1.5
U.K. speech     68.8    27.3     3.9

U.S. writing    92.7     0.3     7.0
U.S. speech     69.3     0.6    30.1

So it's safest to avoid both "different to" and "different than", even though they have ≈30% popularity in UK and US speech respectively, and use "different from" exclusively. See also Michael Quinion's World Wide Words where he points out that many good writers have used the much-maligned now-grudgingly-accepted "than".

abbreviations - How should I abbreviate "versus"?

There are 4 types of abbreviations I know for "versus":

• v


• v.


• vs


• vs.

I generally use the last one in the list, but I want to stick to one and use only that one. Which one is more proper (or more prevalent), and why?

Extra question: Which one should be preferred in scientific papers?

Answer

In legal contexts, the abbreviation "v." is used. Elsewhere, the most common is "vs.". In formal contexts (e.g. scientific papers), it is probably best to have the period at the end of the abbreviation. I assume you would be using this abbreviation in graphs/charts/titles and things like that; the abbreviation would be appropriate in these places, but not within normal prose of the paper.

nouns - What are set of words word like "crocodiles" and "alligators", and "turtle" and "tortoise" called?

There are times when various words can both be used to describe one particular kind of animal. The animal one word specifies is a bit different from the other(s), but in most cases there's plenty of overlap and few know the little things about them that differentiates them.

1. 
   

   crocodile and alligator

   
   




2. 
   

   turtle and tortoise

   
   




3. 
   
   

   shrimp/prawn and lobster

   
   




4. 
   

   crab, lobster, and crayfish

   
   

EDIT: I know, the examples are a bit confusing. I wrote this in a hurry, thinking that I'll edit it later on (which I have done). The species/catagory these words fall into is the same.

possessives - "My wife and I's seafood collaboration dinner"

I just stumbled upon a Reddit post titled:

My wife and I's seafood collaboration dinner. How does it look?

Sure enough, the top comment immediately points out that it should be "my wife's and my". However, a cross-post to the Grammar subreddit produced the following comment:

It's fine as it is written. "my wife and I" is a noun phrase, functioning as a subjective pronoun in the singular and made possessive with the apostrophe. It is exactly the same as "our".

It seems weird because you would never use "I's" on its own but it is not on its own here - it is part of a noun phrase.

That's a rather intriguing argument. Does it hold any water?

Answer

Short answer

Yes, this argument does have a basis in linguistic fact, which is why some people do it in the first place, but that doesn't mean it must be correct in Standard English (and it isn't).

Longer Answer

This argument does hold water in the linguistic sense. "My wife and I" is, in fact, a phrase — a syntactic constituent. The fact that this phrase happens to end with the word I does not preclude it from taking the Saxon genitive as a whole unit. There are many cases where people apply the Saxon genitive ('s) to entire phrases in everyday speech:

1. John and Marsha's house was robbed last night.


2. I'm not a fan of 1995 to 2005's music scene at all.


3. The plants were eaten by the man next door's cat.

In the case of (1), if we follow the logic of "my wife's and my", we should have to say "John's and Marsha's house" — the genitive should have been distributed among the nouns in the conjoined phrase. Same for (2) and (3). And in (3) the 's is directly next to an adjectival phrase "next door", not even a noun phrase.

Now, people may have different opinions about which of these types of constructions they would allow and in what context; the fact is that people say these sorts of things all the time, and for most people they don't even register as anything out of the ordinary when they happen.

In Standard English, when a pronoun is involved in a conjoined phrase like "my wife and I", the genitive marker is distributed to all the noun phrases in the conjoined phrase. This would yield the construction "my wife's and my".

However, in the case of "my wife and I's", what we are seeing is one or more dialects extending this phrasal Saxon genitive to include some conjoined phrases that include pronouns. So the phrase is getting the genitive marker, rather than each of the units within the phrase.

Both approaches are linguistically sound, but only one is accepted as a standard; namely, "my wife's and my". Standard forms are chosen somewhat arbitrarily. This means that they don't have some sort of objective "correctness"; it also means that you can't argue for the correctness of a non-standard form based on logic. There are many logical ways to convey ideas, and one was chosen to be the standard. If you wish to communicate in a context where adherence to formal/standard rules is beneficial, then you should choose the standard form.

gerunds - "I remember watching Dallas," vs. "I remember us watching Dallas."

I remember watching Dallas.
I remember us watching Dallas.

I know that both are common usage.

What I don't understand is exactly what role "watching" has in the second sentence. It is clearly a gerund and direct object of "remember" in the first. In the second, "us" is clearly an object, as it always is. I think most people will tell me that "watching" is then an adjective or adverb ("I saw John walking down the street"), but this doesn't sit right with me, because the act of watching is still the main thing, and "us" is actually only providing more detail about it. But, grammatically, "us" and "watching" cannot both be nouns.

Some will say it is an adverbial phrase, but that should have a comma: "I remember us, watching Dallas." It just seems unlikely to be using "watching" there in a completely different way than when "us" is not there.

Another example:

We must address the issue of children using mobile devices in class.

The issue is not so much children as it is the usage.

"It ended with me calling you to find out the security code."
"How do you feel about Putin winning another term?"
"One wrong move could mean you going to jail."
"This is me walking out."

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Edit: The answers to the question linked as a possible duplicate treat the word "him" as the subject of a clause, which it categorically cannot be. This is incorrect and an improper understanding of the grammar of the sentence.

To further illustrate, the kind of phrase I'm talking about can be used as a subject:

Children using mobile devices in school is becoming a serious problem.

Now, would you replace "children" with "they," as you would have to if it were the subject?
They using mobile devices in school is becoming a serious problem.
NO. That would be incorrect. So "Children using mobile devices in school" is not a clause, as claimed in the answers to the other questions, since a clause requires a subject and predicate.

Others would say:
Their using mobile devices in school is becoming a serious problem.
But, putting children back in, this would mean:
Children's using mobile devices in school is becoming a serious problem.
And "using" here cannot be a deverbal noun as it has a direct object. I would say:
Them using mobile devices in school is becoming a serious problem. OR
Me marrying you was the best thing that could have happened to you.

grammar - How to use "The first thing I did was"?

I'm unable to figure out if the following sentence is correct:

"After I watched the movie, the first thing I did was shutdown the laptop and go outside"

Is this grammatically correct? Or should it be "..went outside".
Please help.

etymology - "I've gotten better-looking as I get older" When did "gotten" re-enter the BrEng vernacular?

This summer I went to Ireland, to be more precise Dublin. Overall good weather and good fun. Anyway, while I was staying in Dublin I'd buy the local newspaper and one tabloid headline caught my eye.

Now I've thought long and hard before posting this question because I don't want to know or hear that sentence is correct if it's spoken by a native speaker. Tell me it's dialectal, tell me it's peculiar to Irish (Is Miriam an Irish speaker? I don't know any more because I've thrown out the rag), tell me that it's American English "slang" which has caught on in the UK and in Ireland. But more than anything else, please tell me if that statement is grammatical.

If it had been me, I would have said:

I've become better-looking as I've got older

or at a stretch

I'm better-looking as I get older

I prefer the hyphen in better-looking, am I mistaken? Is this punctuation symbol superfluous? Isn't gotten AmEng? In BrEng the conjugation of the verb get is get, got, got but wiktionary tells me that gotten is archaic British English. I can't pinpoint why that headline bothers me so much, but it does. Can someone explain if this sentence is grammatical/ungrammatical and why?

Thank you.

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EDIT

Some users have commented the dissonance of different tenses used in the statement. The present perfect I've gotten, with the present simple I get older.

Perhaps the present perfect continuous I've been getting older would be more appropriate because it expresses an action that began in the past but is still in progress. Whereas the present perfect I've gotten better-looking might be "perfect" for describing an action that began in the past whose results are felt in the present. All of which leads me to conclude that the following sentence is more grammatically acceptable

I've got better-looking as I've been getting older.

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EDIT TWO

On EL&U today I saw this question pop up: Differences between "I have got" and "I have gotten" The highest voted answer says

In general, "have got" is the present perfect form of "to get" in UK
English, while "have gotten" is the US English version.

While a second contributor quoting from The Cambridge Encyclopedia of English Language wrote

Gotten is probably the most distinctive of all the AmE/BrE grammatical
differences, but British people who try to use it often get it wrong.

It is not simply an alternative for have got. Gotten is used in such
contexts as

They've gotten a new boat. (= obtain)
They've gotten interested. (= become)
He's gotten off the chair. (= moved)

It appears to me the headline in The Irish Daily Mail clearly conflicts with both these claims.

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EDIT THREE
As correctly pointed out in @fdb's answer "I do not know why you think that Ireland is part of Britain." I made a serious mistake in my second edit and title, Ireland has been a republic since 1922. The six Northern counties in the north east of Ireland who chose to remain in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland are British.

But because I am no longer resident in the United Kingdom, I was surprised by the Irish headline. As a child I don't think I ever said gotten but I was conscious of it being American and to me it was "slang". If gotten is currently used in Ireland, an island which is only 496 Km from England, and American English is omnipresent, it seems likely that "gotten" should be part of the BrEng vernacular. If that is the case...

When did "gotten" re-enter the BrEng vernacular?

Answer

There are several possible problems, but most of them are matters of style rather than grammar.

Get rather than become could be considered unimaginative or ugly, but I suspect those who think it so are haunted by the ghost of an English teacher inculcating rules rather than commonsense: personally I get older every day, and would never say become older.

As I get older cannot be justified in that position - grammatically. The sub-editor who composed the strapline may have been in a hurry, or it may be a deliberate mistake. Do not forget that headlines are not, in most cases, required to do anything other than grab your attention -if the journalist knew that his error had caused a discussion like this (and possibly somebody taking the trouble to try and find the original story), he would consider it a job well done.

Better-looking would normally be hyphenated, but again that is subject to journalistic requirements; space is at a premium in headlines, and the omission does no harm.

Gotten for got is the interesting part. Gotten is certainly archaic, and several dictionaries call it "especially U.S."; but it's not wrong. The best reason why it is used here is the rhythm; the three trochees of gotten better-looking sound better and are more memorable than I get or I've got, and certainly better than the dreadful (but grammatically correct) I have got. Whether that was a deliberate decision by the writer I know not. If Miriam is an actor, it may well be a verbatim quote; nobody knows better the value of memorable wording.

hyphenation - Does "cost-benefit ratio" use a hyphen or an en-dash?

Should I write "cost-benefit" (hyphen) or "cost–benefit" (en dash), and why?

Answer

Formally, hyphens are for joining terms, and en dashes are for ranges and distinctions. En dashes have a secondary application joining terms that are already hyphenated or contain spaces, but that doesn't apply here. In this situation I would use an en dash or a slash. Of course, if you do write it with a hyphen, nobody is going to be confused.

Technically, cost–benefit analysis can be interpreted as either [cost–benefit] analysis—an analysis of costs versus benefits—or cost–[benefit analysis]—costs versus an analysis of benefits. Luckily, the latter doesn't make any sense and would really only arise from deliberate pedantic misinterpretation.

grammar - 'There are two types of girl' or 'there are two types of girls'?

Which of the following is correct:

'There are two types of girl' or 'there are two types of girls'?

grammar - "If I was really ugly" versus "if I were really ugly"

I tweeted a little earlier today:

I mean, if I was really ugly they would probably run me down, right?

A friend called me out on my incorrect grammar:

if you WERE really ugly. Grammar, Ryan.

So this begs the question, who's right here? Is it correct to say "If I was really ugly" or "If I were really ugly"?

Answer

"If I were" is correct in this case, as it is using the past of the subjunctive mood, which is used to express an imaginary or hypothetical condition. That sentence is similar to the following ones, which both are using the subjuntive mood.

If I were rich, I would live in Hawaii.
I would live in Hawaii if I had a job there.

The NOAD reports a note about the usage of the subjunctive mood:

if I were you; the report recommends that he face the tribunal; it is important that they be aware of the provisions of the act. These examples all contain a verb in the subjunctive mood. The subjunctive is used to express situations that are hypothetical or not yet realized and is typically used for what is imagined, hoped for, demanded, or expected. In English, the subjunctive mood is fairly uncommon (especially in comparison with other languages, such as Spanish), mainly because most of the functions of the subjunctive are covered by modal verbs such as might, could, and should. In fact, in English, the subjunctive is often indistinguishable from the ordinary indicative mood since its form in most contexts is identical. It is distinctive only in the third person singular, where the normal indicative -s ending is absent (he face rather than he faces in the example above), and in the verb to be (I were rather than I was, and they be rather than they are in the examples above). In modern English, the subjunctive mood still exists but is regarded in many contexts as optional. Use of the subjunctive tends to convey a more formal tone, but there are few people who would regard its absence as actually wrong. Today, it survives mostly in fixed expressions, as in be that as it may; far be it from me; as it were; lest we forget; God help you; perish the thought; and come what may.