grammar - Is there a difference between a picture of me and a picture of mine?

Is there a difference between a picture of me and a picture of mine?
As far as I know, a picture of mine is correct. I wonder if we can use 'a picture of me' in a particular context.

grammaticality - Why to use "May" before using "May God bless you"?

I heard it many times but I haven't really pondered on that. We can hear these following sentences in our daily lives:

1. May God bless you.


2. May God be pleased with you.


3. May God accept your prayers.

But why do we use "May" at the beginning of the sentence? Apparently, it doesn't make the sentence a question but more polite and respectful towards the God maybe? I cannot tell I heard this structure in any other sentence but religious ones. Which grammar rule does it belong to? And how do we use it in different forms?

Answer

See meaning 4 of may at dictionary.com

(used to express wish or prayer): May you live to an old age.

It follows the same grammatical pattern as let (and is almost a synonym).

Let their children grow up happy!

May their children grow up happy!

The usage of may in this sense is not restricted to prayers, although one could say that it's formal, if not pompous, in modern usage.

meaning - Usage of "same" vs. "selfsame"

I have been wondering in my head when is it more appropriate grammatically and more appropriate in terms of the English language to use word selfsame instead of same.

The research that I have done suggests that 'same' can be used as an adjective and a pronoun and as an adverb. While selfsame can only be used as an adjective. So comparably it would appear to be only a subset of grammatical cases where its used. That being said, I am having still having trouble imagining a sentence or a set of rules to follow that indicate when you should use selfsame instead of same.

Google define gives this example:

He was standing in the selfsame spot you're filling now.

But I can easily see 'same' replacing 'selfsame' without an apparent change in meaning of the sentence.

Answer

Macmillan has:

selfsame ADJECTIVE [ONLY BEFORE NOUN] FORMAL . . .

used for emphasizing that something is exactly the same as another
thing

He asked me the selfsame question.

So you wouldn't say 'the colours orange and amber are nearly the selfsame' or 'orange is the selfsame as amber'.

You'd use it when adding emphasis:

This is the selfsame room we had when we stayed here 25 years ago!

But probably not for the less dramatic news:

This is the same room we had when we were on our way to the Grand Canyon last week.

I wouldn't agree that the usage is formal, but I would say it's not used too often in colloquial speech.

possessives - What is the correct way to say "It was this week that Justin and my lives changed forever"?

What is the correct way to indicate "Justin and I" as being possessive of our individual lives in this sentence? Is there a way to do this without restructuring the sentence?

A friend of mine posted a Facebook status that said, "It was this week that Justin and my lives changed forever," in regard to a Facebook memory. This doesn't sound correct to me, as it is possessive and thus, I assume, needs a possessive suffix ('s) after either "Justin" or "my".

I've seen some other threads on here that come pretty close to answering my question, but they all follow the joint possessive (my and Justin's) with a singular noun, like "cat" or "seafood dinner".

The best solution I can think of is to change "Justin and my" to "our", but in a sentence that follows she says, "Now he's gone over a year...etc." without any other reference to Justin, so I feel like individual identity might be important to maintain. Some other possibilities that I've seen suggested include:

• It was this week that Justin and my's lives changed forever



• It was this week that my and Justin's lives changed forever


• It was this week that mine and Justin's lives changed forever


• It was this week that Justin and I's lives changed forever


• It was this week that Justin and my's life changed forever

Are any of these suggestions even remotely correct?

Thanks in advance, everyone!

---

Links to the threads I mentioned:

Another page I found - they suggest 'our' the the second last paragraph

Answer

The least amount of restructuring I can think of is:

It was this week that both my life and Justin's changed forever.

The use of both makes it clear that there are two lives—rather than a shared single life (in the case of a partnership).

Without any restructuring, the "best" that can be done (I think) is:

It was this week that Justin's and my life changed forever.

With joint ownership, the possessive belongs to the final subject. In the example, since the first subject has a possessive, it could be assumed that there is no joint ownership. Of course, this is still not ideal. I don't think there is a good solution without some degree of restructuring.

punctuation - What is the proper way to punctuate "but no"?

I'm trying to figure out the proper usage and punctuation of "but no". I think it's one of the following:

• You figure I would have made at least one post about Arthur C. Clarke’s “2010” during 2010. But no, I missed the entire year.


• You figure I would have made at least one post about Arthur C. Clarke’s “2010” during 2010. But, no. I missed the entire year.

Is one of those accurate, or is there a better way?

Answer

Note that you're worrying about the correct placement of a comma in a situation which flouts the grade school rule, "do not begin a sentence with a conjunction like and or but".

What you have here is a casual narrative:

You figure I would have made at least one post about Arthur C. Clarke’s “2010” during 2010. But no. I missed the entire year.

This is not formal writing but prose. An art form. (Is it correct to paint it in watercolor, or should you use oil? Acrylic?)

Hey look, I used "An art form" as a sentence. A fragment! No predicate or anything. Oops, I made like Britney Spears and did it again.

word choice - "By/before/until/through" in the past

I need to express how an event occurred before-or-at a certain time in the past (non exclusive or, which of the two alternatives is the actual one is left open).

For the future I would have used "by", but what about the past? "Until" is for prolonged actions/states only, just like "through", "before" excludes the cutoff moment, and an expression like "by yesterday" seems to me intentionally wrong (both syntactically and semantically).

Or can I actually say something like

Last weekend we went skiing, we had bought the equipment by then.

This is still a special case, as it involves the completion of a "pending" action, not just an event. Does

The concert was held by September.

make sense? What about:

Please provide a list of all his books published before 2000 included.

or is it wrong: are "before" and "included" mutually exclusive?

Are there any other possibilities?

single word requests - What are specific cartoon-type interjections like "cough" and "sigh" called in English?

In comics, for example those by Walt Disney, interjections that describe or emphasize in words what the characters in the image are doing are quite commonly used (cough, sigh, tweet).

According to the German Wikipedia, a grammatical term for this type of word has been introduced only recently, in 1998. It’s called Inflektiv.

I could not find an English translation, neither on these pages nor in any search engine. Is there a term for this?

Answer

The German Wikipedia page for Inflektiv also provides a synonym—Erikativ—which is "named for Erika Fuchs, who translated Mickey Mouse comics into German and used the form frequently". Going by Google's results, Erikativ (or Ericativ, sometimes with an 'e' at the end) appears to be just as popular as Inflektiv.

There is an interesting (and exhaustive) paper by a Mark Lindsay [PDF] on the subject of the Erikativ from a linguistic point of view. He states:

The German Erikativ construction (also known as the Inflektiv (Teuber 1998)) is a phenomenon that existed prior to the mid-twentieth century, but first developed widespread prominence through the German-language translations of Disney comics during the 1950’s. The translator, Erika Fuchs, used this form to describe sounds and actions of the characters (not unlike English crash! or pow!); eventually, these words evolved beyond onomatopoeic use, expanding to phrases like stare (starr) or dancing while sitting (sitzendtanz). Unlike onomatopoeias, these new forms followed a predictable pattern.

It should be noted that Teuber (1998, p. 8) describes the Inflektiv as a verb form that is non-inflected (German: nicht-flektiert); therefore, the German term Inflektiv should be translated into English as Uninflective. To avoid the confusion this causes, I shall use the alternative term, Erikativ.

Later:

Teuber (1998) argues convincingly that the Erikativ is a true verb form, as it has semantic and morphological restrictions that distinguish it from the freeform nature of interjections. Noting the common similarity between the Erikativ form and the verbal stem, he coins the term Inflektiv (‘uninflective’) to describe its lack of overt inflection.

The Erikativ is essentially the same as "actions" or "emotes" (WP) seen in most IRC channels and other chat rooms such as *dies*, *dances*, *rolls his eyes*, *coughs*, etc.

In comic lettering, emotes, when inserted within dialogue, are punctuated differently. These punctuations are called breath marks, crow's feet, cat's whiskers, or fireflies. I am unaware of any standard term that describes the "breath words" themselves.

punctuation - Comma placement in a "parenthetical expression preceded by a conjunction"

I was reading Strunk and White's Elements of Style, and I disagree with the comma placement in the following example:

If a parenthetic expression is preceded by a conjunction, place the first comma

before the conjunction, not after:

He saw us coming, and unaware that we had learned of his
treachery, greeted us with a smile.

To me, it makes more sense to place the comma after "and", not before it. That is, to write:

He saw us coming and, unaware that we had learned of his

treachery, greeted us with a smile.

In the above modification, the main sentence is "He saw us coming and greeted us with a smile", which is perfectly valid in structure; the parenthetical is "unaware that we had learned of his treachery".

I know that a lot of people have disagreed with Strunk & White's writing and claim that it's overrated (and frankly, I sort of agree with those people), so I'd like to know whether this example would also fall into the category of "things Strunk and White got wrong".

Is placing a comma after a conjunction in a parenthetical expression, such as in the example above, grammatically correct?

grammar - Being shorter of something

I was having a chat with a friend earlier, at some point he said "you should have a score of 180, bit short of that aren't you? ;)", at which I responded with "I figure you're shorter :D".

Now, I guess this phrase can be interpreted in two ways:

• He is shorter than me to that score, hence he is closer to it;


• He is shorter of it than me, hence he has a lower score.

Which of the two interpretations is correct?

I get that the first interpretation may be correct when we are talking about a goal: "I am short of a goal" means that I am at some distance from achieving it, whereas "I am shorter than you of that same goal" might mean that I am at a closer distance from it compared to the other person (possibly?). I'm not really sure (that's why I am asking here in the end, we could not figure out who was "right").

Also, is relative superlative even allowed in this instance?

As my name suggests I am not a native speaker, so every bit of help is gonna be useful. Thanks!

Is it correct to use "punctuation outside of the quotations", or "inside?"

Or is it region specific? I was always taught that when ending a quotation, that punctuation remains inside of the quote.

I think he said, "we should go to the store."
Are you sure he said, "we should go to the store?"

As opposed to:

I think he said, "we should go to the store". Are you sure he said, "we should go to the store"?

This is just an arbitrary example off of the top of my head, and it's hard for me to come up with an example for the second usage because it looks completely wrong to me.

I actually got into a small argument with my girlfriend earlier this year because she uses something similar to the second example, and said that's how she was taught (which is why I ask if it's region-specific.)

Anyway, is there a correct usage for ending a quotation with punctuation?

Answer

In American English, commas and periods go inside the quotation marks. Semi-colons, question marks and exclamation marks go inside the quotation marks only if they're part of the quotation. E.g.,

"What time is it?" he asked.

Did he really say, "I don't care"?

So your example should be the following:

I think he said, "we should go to the store." Are you sure he said, "we should go to the store"?

grammatical number - Is "you have so many double standards" idiomatic and if not, why and what would be?

The noun double standard is countable. Looking at some ngram you can see the plural form used for titles (to mean something like the topic of...) or when there's a number preceding it (i.e. referring to a list: the 49 double standards...). But the results don't really show the plural in a sentence with a conjugated verb and a personal pronoun... For instance telling someone "you have so many double standards" doesn't feel completely right, or is it just me? I think I would use "different" here instead of double, and further explain what I mean by that (different standards for such and such thing/person, in this or that context etc. though I might end up using the singular form down the line: double standard this, double standard that).

Do you think a sentence like "you have so many double standards" is idiomatic (it has 2k hits on the search engines, don't know if that's a lot for something like this); is there a more natural way to phrase this (and if so how would you rephrase it)? If not, is this because there's something specific about this noun (is it just because it's not that much being used?) or is this more generally about the usage difference of the singular vs. plural form of the nouns/the way the verb to have is used (improperly/ambiguously?) with an object?

Answer

Yes, it's idiomatic. Double standard is a count noun, as you say, and may be modified by any number of count and count-like words:

Two double standards:

In effect, there were two double standards at the same time - one between the sexes and the other between the races.

Many double standards:

To support this claim, I must challenge the generality of the term 'the double standard' and one specific misapplication of it to this period. The term is too general because there were many double standards.

So many double standards:

I dismiss the statements that all men are equal because so many double standards exist in this world, and as a youth, you notice how standards are set up to cause failure!

Also, have as a verb can take double standards as an object without difficulty:

Have double standards

Young adults have double standards about sexual infidelity.

Elsa thinks about how Granny used to say, “You have standards and I have double standards, and so I win.”

grammar - Difference between "couldn't" and "wasn't able to"

I don't quite understand a difference between "couldn't" and
"wasn't able to". Someone suggested that we use "wasn't able to" when we talk about one action in the past and "couldn't" when repeated actions in the past. Is that the case?

For example,

• I wasn't able to sleep last night



• I wasn't able to fall asleep last night
  




• I couldn't sleep last night



• I couldn't fall asleep last night

Which ones are right ?

grammar - "I was too surprised to say anything (or) something"

Which phrase is correct and why? I think "something" is correct because we have a positive sentence not a negative nor a question. As i have seen from the internet (google search) the case with the "anything" is correct. Can anyone explain to me please why is that correct?

Answer

Too... to... is a structure which implies a negative. meaning I was too surprise (I can not say anything). hope this help.

grammar - Comma before adverbial participial phrases (reduced adverbial phrases) and participial prepositions

Another tricky comma question that has recently popped up in my line work that I have not been able to resolve to my satisfaction. Apologies it's a bit long, but all parts are related and additional details + references are provided for responders' benefit.

The question comes in 2 parts.

Comma before adverbial participial phrase

Do we put a comma before a participial phrase that follows the main clause when it stands for reduced adverbial phrase (see "NB!" below on why I call these participial phrases reduced adverbial phrases) and is restrictive in meaning, and if yes, why do we use such comma?

Couple of examples:

1. I came to work today(,) wearing my new suit. ("Wearing my new suit" stands for "While wearing my new suit", with full sentence being "I came to work today while wearing my new suit".)

Is the comma necessary before wearing, given the participial phrase is intended to be restrictive in meaning. If the comma is not in the full sentence, it should surely not be in the reduced sentence?

2. She is very lucky(,) being suitable for this job. ("Being suitable for this job" stands for "because of being suitable for this job", with full sentence being "She is very lucky because of being suitable for this job".)

Is the comma necessary before being, given the participial phrase is intended to be restrictive in meaning. If the comma is not in the full sentence, it should surely not be in the reduced sentence?

3. He walks(,) dragging his left feet. (Full sentence: "He walks while dragging his feet".)

"Dragging his feet" restrictive, and no comma in full sentence - so no comma?

4. I escaped(,) using a fire exit. (Full sentence: "I escaped by using a fire exit".)

"Using a fire exit" restrictive, so no comma?

5. Today I came home(,) having only finished half of my workload. (Full sentence: "Today I came home today after having only finished half of my workload".)

"Having only finished half of my workload" is restrictive, specifying the circumstances in which I came home (otherwise with comma it reads "I just came home today"). No comma in full sentence, so no comma in reduced?

Doing the research across various publishers, I see commas are generally dropped in constructions 1-4 (present participle tense), but not in construction (perfect participle tense) 5.

In fact, if you check this link - example 1 and this link - example 5, two identical constructions, one in present tense and the other in perfect tense, has different punctuation (present tense = no comma; perfect tense = comma). Why? Surely, grammatical logic should be the same irrespective of the punctuation?

Same is true for this grammar site, which talks about the subject: no comma before adverbial participial phrase in present tense, but there is one in the in perfect tense (why is this?):

Present:

Tom lost his keys (while) walking through the park. (Tom lost his keys while he was walking through the park.)

She left the room singing happily. (She left the room as she was singing happily.)

Perfect:

Mark knew the town well, having lived there all his life.

Is there a general guideline as to why commas are present or missing? Grammatically, if they modify the verb, just like any adverbial, and are restrictive, comma should be omitted in both present and perfect participial phrases, correct?

NB! I know that traditional grammar says that participial phrases modify adjectives; however, there is plenty of sources that say that they can also modify verbs, including BBC, British Council, CMOS, GMAT.

Couple of more examples:

6. You did well(,) compared to me. (Full sentence: "You did well when compared to me".)

"compared to me" restrictive, and no comma in full sentence - so no comma?

7. This is not a bad day(,) taking into consideration what others suffered. (Full sentence: "This is not a bad day when taking into consideration what others suffered".)

"taking into consideration" restrictive, and no comma in full sentence - so no comma?

Comma before participial prepositional phrase

Similarly, does one need a comma before participial prepositional phrase that follows the main clause if the meaning of the prepositional phrase is restrictive, and if yes, why?

Quick reference on participial prepositions from Gregg Reference Manual, 1oth edition, section 1082 NOTE:

NOTE: A few participles have now become established as prepositions; for example: assuming, concerning, considering, depending, following, given, granted, judging, pending, providing, and regarding. Therefore, when they introduce phrases at the start of a sentence, it is not essential that they refer to the subject of the sentence.

Few examples:

8. This is good result(,) given how other teams performed.
   Given acts as restrictive preposition; restrictive prepositional phrases do not take commas - so no comma?




9. I will stay late(,) assuming you cover me tomorrow.
   Assuming acts as restrictive preposition; restrictive prepositional phrases do not take commas - so no comma?




10. You performed well(,) considering how other people managed.
    
    Considering acts as restrictive preposition; restrictive prepositional phrases do not take commas - so no comma?

Summary

The three main questions are:

a) How to punctuate the above adverbial participial phrases and are there any guidelines? If the participial phrases are restrictive adverbial reduced phrases, can the comma be dropped, just like in the full sentences when subordinator is present?

b) Why when the adverbial participial phrase follows the main clause there is no comma in the present tense, but there is one in perfect tense (based on majority publishers), despite having identical grammatical constructions (albeit different participle tenses)?

c) How are restrictive participial prepositional phrases punctuated? Should they be treated in the same way as non-participial prepositional phrases without the comma?

Is it fair to say that:

1) Adverbial participial phrases act adverbially and thus modify the predicate in their respective main clauses, just like their equivalent full phrases & clauses they stand in for - therefore, requiring no comma as they are restrictive in meaning?

2) Participial prepositions act adverbially and thus modify the predicate in their respective main clauses, just like their more frequently used alternatives (For example, in example 8, "assuming" can be replaced with "provided" or "if", both of which take no comma as the meaning is restrictive. Surely the same applies to "assuming"?

Most style guides, including CMOS, don't give much info on participle phrases; however, Gregg has this section:

Gregg Reference Manual, 10th edition, section 137:

When a participial, infinitive, or prepositional phrase occurs at some point other than the beginning of a sentence (see 1135) or the beginning of a clause (see 1136), commas are omitted or inserted depending on whether the phrase is essential or nonessential

Hyphenation in compounds with abbreviation remarks

So far I understood, that hyphenation should aid readability.

Examples [1, 2]:

North America-based company

A Gaussian mixture model-based approach

We propose spherical Gaussian-based approximations to calculate this analytically.

Although, this never aligned with my understanding of parsing trees, I would still like to apply this rule.

How does it extend to abbreviation remarks?

Gaussian mixture model (GMM)-based approach

Non-negative matrix factorization (NMF)-inspired method

My own understanding of how to parse the words is as follows, which does not seem to be reflected in how hyphens are used:

{
  {
    {
      Gaussian {
        mixture model
      }
    } (GMM)
  }-based
} approach

Answer

Hyphens are used to compose constituents, either words or phrases, to make words. Consequently, to know whether a hyphen is appropriate, you have to know the categories of constituents, not just what the constituents are. Below, I've tried to amend your diagram for "Gaussian mixture model (GMM)-based approach" by adding category (parts of speech) information. NP means noun phrase, N is noun (a word), A is adjective or other noun-modifier (a word), Participle (a word).

{NP
  {A
    {NP
      A Gaussian {N
        N mixture N model
      }
    } (GMM)

  }-Participle based
} N approach  

There are two types of word compounds in the example. A compound adjective (a word) is made by combining a NP (a phrase) and a Participle (a word), and a compound N (a word) is made by combining two Ns (words). For the latter type of compound, a hyphen is often optional.

I'm not sure I see a problem with the hyphenation. I'm worried, though, about the structure of "Gaussian mixture model", which must be a phrase, not a single word, because "Gaussian" is an adjective, and noun-noun compounds can't contain adjectives. But "Gaussian mixture" should be a constituent, because of the interpretation: mixture of Gaussian distributions.

meaning - What's the Appropriate Word to Say You're 'Dazzled' by a Nice Smell?

Imagine there's food being cooked on stove and you feel the pleasant smell and it somehow makes you mad! You want to keep smelling or walk to the kitchen and get some of it to eat.

What verb would you use to explain the situation?

The only verb that comes to my mind is dazzle, but I check it in the dictionary (LDOCE-subscription only) and the second definition is:

to impress someone very much by being or doing something very exciting and unusual - used especially in news reports

The Princess’s off-the-shoulder dress dazzled the waiting crowds.

As a speaker he would dazzle listeners with his brilliant wordplay and witty remarks.

And that doesn't seem to be right for this situation and we also know that the other meaning is when you're dazzled by a light of some sort.

Checking the Thesaurus I notice the other verb to be knocked out, but again I don't think it's appropriate.

In Persian we have a general word for being drunk and we'd use it for pleasant smells as well, so what's the smell equivalent of being dazzled or drunk in English?

To explain this a bit more, I'm looking for a word that would describe the images below:

pronouns - Do you use the masculine or feminine with "victim"?

My mother tongue is Latin-based so I'm used to differences in male/female for neutral words. I don't know how this would work with some words in English.

If the "victim" in a sentence is neutral (ie: it could be either a man or a woman, in this context it makes absolutely no difference and we don't know if it's a man or a woman), should I use "his" or "her"?

My instinct would tell me to use his but I seem to remember encountering her in such a neutral situation before.

EDIT:

Here is the exact sentence (it's from a IT Security paper I'm writing):

Finally the paper will demonstrate how the attacker may control the
contents of the web pages delivered to the victim as well as redirect
his downloads towards malicious files.

As you can see I used his here, is that correct?

Answer

There really is no correct answer to this question, and not even a good consensus convention.

Here are some options, such as they are:

1. Generic he
   Doing this, however, in English -- a language without gendered nouns -- can prove inaccurate and may strike some readers as sexist. You could also do a generic she but this will definitely read as reactionary and may distract readers unintentionally.




2. Singular they
   This is probably the most common in non-formal writing and in speech. But many consider the mere idea of treating a plural pronoun as singular to be offensive to proper usage.




3. s/he or he or she
   You can always choose not to choose! This however can read as needlessly verbose and call attention to itself.




4. Alternate
   
   Many people opt to use male and female pronouns in alternate. This has the same issue as 1, but avoids the preferential treatment of the male gendered term. For longer texts (essays, books) this strikes me as the best approach.




5. Avoid the pronoun
   This can be awkward, but in some cases you can be slightly less economical and avoid the pronoun altogether. In your example sentence, you might write: "Someone could attack a victim and take that person's coat."

Again, no right answers here. Style guides differ and some just throw up their hands and remain neutral on the subject.

Pronoun-antecedent agreement question

I was reading this article about jokes on 30 Rock. A sentence seemed strange to me, and I had to reread a few times. They are talking about a writer, Robert Carlock, writing jokes for a character, Dr. Spaceman:

Robert Carlock, in particular, is the Spaceman expert. Most of the
jokes for him, as this one did, come from him.

So, the antecedents are in the first sentence, and the pronouns are in the second. From the context you can figure out that the first him is referring to Spaceman, and the 2nd him is referring to Carlock. The sentence just seems very awkward. Is it grammatically correct? Could there be a more clear way to have written it?

Answer

This pronoun-antecedent relationship is studied under the umbrella of anaphora.

Wikipedia describes it thusly:

"In linguistics, anaphora /əˈnæfərə/ is the use of an expression the interpretation of which depends upon another expression in context (its antecedent or postcedent)." - Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia

There is always some ambiguity introduced with the presence of two or more antecedents. The sentence is not ungrammatical as such, but it is quite a load on the brain to understand and should be cleared up.

The greatest clarification (keeping the current form) would be achieved by repetition of the antecedent, which is usually awkward. I would have combined the sentences into a more singular thought -- something like this:

"Robert Carlock, in particular, is the Spaceman expert; as a result, most of Carlock's jokes, like this one, are borrowed from Spaceman."

Hope this helps.

grammatical number - Should you use “it” or “they” when referencing a group of people?

Should you use it or they when referencing a group of people?

Here is the example sentence:

A group of students was walking on the road when a truck hit them/it and it/they was/were immediately admitted to hospital.

Could native speakers and grammarians please answer this question? For me, it should be used because I am taking about the group as whole, and the group is one thing not many things.

hyphenation - Why multiple length dashes (em, en, hyphen)?

I'm wondering why there are three different sizes (perhaps more?) for lines that separate characters? I understand the grammatical usage (or rather, I could look it up), but the benefit to readers is not clear to me.

Answer

hyphen "The short one"
Its diminutive size helps the reader to read the two words as a single word. Ideally, this would be visually invisible and the two words would be directly joined, but grammar rules don't agree.

en-dash "The mid-sized one"
The difference in appearance is important in order to signal to the reader that it should not be interpreted as a compound word.

em-dash "The long one"
The length of this dash is so significant that it causes a mental pause similar to a semi-colon.

---

If your reader can infer the meaning of the character from the context of the sentence, it is acceptable to simply use a hyphen in all of these cases. The acceptability here is strictly a reader-perception measure and not at all grammar-related. If you are writing a piece that requires strict adherence to a style guide, you should follow that.

On a personal note, I find that a trailing space is usually required when using a hyphen in place of an em-dash.

---

Fun side note: en-dash and em-dash are named after the glyphs to which their lengths should match. You can use this to help you remember which one is longer: an n is shorter than an m.

Using past tense when referencing a still-true fact

In the sentence: "I didn't know she had a son,"

Can I say "I didn't know she has a son" instead, because he is a teenager now?

Or are both correct?

Answer

If she currently has a son, then you can use either version #1 or #2:

• 1.) "I didn't know [(that) she has a son]."




• 2.) "I didn't know [(that) she had a son]."

For that situation, where she currently has a son, the #2 version happens to use a backshift preterite. (Note that "preterite" is the same thing as a "past-tense verb"). As to which version is preferable, well, that depends: which one do you prefer? That is, which one sounds better to your ear?

One of the reasons why a subordinate clause -- like your "(that) she has a son" -- can be backshifted into "(that) she had a son" is that the matrix clause is headed by a preterite (the verb "didn't").

Backshifting in a subordinate clause can occur when either one of the following conditions is true:

• A.) The tense of the matrix clause is a type of past-tense.




• B.) The time of the matrix clause situation is in the past time sphere.

Sometimes, depending on the purpose of the sentence, there can be a preference for either the non-backshifted version or for the backshifted version. Sometimes the non-backshifted version might be considered to be "much more widely appropriate" than the backshifted version. Sometimes the backshifted version is obligatory.

NOTE: There's a common misconception that a present-tense verb being used in its timeless sense (or other related uses) cannot be backshifted. That is untrue, as backshifting is still generally available. For instance, in the older 1985 reference grammar by Quirk et al., A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language, section 14.31, page 1027:

Here are other examples where present forms may be retained in indirect speech:

• Their teacher had told them that the earth moves around the sun. -- [11]

. . .

In all these sentences, past forms may also be used, by optional application of the backshift rule. Sentence [11] has the simple present in its timeless use, . . .

And so, according to Quirk et al., the following backshifted version (to correspond to [11]) is also acceptable:

• Their teacher had told them that the earth moved around the sun.

Here are some related posts, on the topic of backshifting:

(Some of the material in this post has been borrowed from those two related posts.)

grammar - Using commas and pronouns correctly in "Not only because, but also" construct

Firstly, I know that there are plenty of questions concerning "not only, but also" construct on StackExchange. However, none of them could give me an explanation for what I am trying to figure out...

How much complementary information is required when we are constructing a sentence with "not only because,.. but also"? What I mean by that is, do we need to use the same pronoun in both parts of the sentence, do we need a comma after the first principle clause?

1.) X theories are one of the most decisive for the Y industries (,) not only because they help us develop an understanding of Z, but also propose schemes for...

2.) X theories are one of the most decisive for the Y industries (,) not only because they help us develop an understanding of Z, but also (because they) propose schemes for...

3.) X theories are one of the most decisive for the Y industries (,) not only because they help us develop an understanding of Z, but also (they) propose schemes for...

4.) X theories are one of the most decisive for the Y industries because they not only help us develop an understanding of Z, but also (because they) propose schemes for...

Are all of these alternatives grammatically correct and technically identical? Or, is there any difference in the meanings from the idiomatic point of view?

Answer

The nature of word (word groups) that follows 'not only' and 'but also' should be same. In the above example, much of the confusion will disappear if 'because' is displaced.

"X theories are one of the most decisive for the Y industries because they not only help us develop an understanding of Z, but also propose schemes for...
Here, "not only help.... but also propose....."

grammar - Can "a person" be used as plural?

Is it acceptable to write: A person can develop their talent. or a person can develop their uniqueness?
In this case the person is used as a general term, not a specific person.

pronouns - different from them vs. different from themselves

"Some people choose friends who are different from themselves, while others choose friends who are similar to themselves."

"Some people choose friends who are different from them, while others choose friends who are similar to them."

Which is correct? Or both?

The sentence "Some people choose friends who are different from themselves, while others choose friends who are similar to themselves." comes from a list of essay topics compiled by ETS (Educational Testing Service).

grammar - Possessive-S/apostrophe in a list, including the first and second person

When adding possessive-S/apostrophe to a list, the rule is only the last person has the apostrophe if the item is shared, or everyone has one if they have the items each, e.g.

John and Mary's houses = the houses that belong jointly to John and Mary.

John's and Mary's houses = the houses that belong to John and Mary as individuals, at least one each.

However, I am curious if the rules are slightly different when possessive pronouns are used for a single item.

You and Mary's house OR your and Mary's house?

I'm even more unclear when the first person is involved.

Mary and my house OR Mary's and my house?

Finally, when there are at least three people, including the first person, does the last named person have the possessive-S/apostrophe, or all/none of them?

• John, Mary and my house


• John, Mary's and my house



• John's, Mary's and my house

I'd be very grateful to anyone able to clarify this, ideally with a some form of reference, as I can't find it anywhere.

---

There have been several suggestions to use "our", yet if the text refers to a group of people, all of whom own co-own houses with some others within the group*, then the above style wording would be necessary, so my question stands.

* eg I own a house with John and Mary, I co-own another with Peter and yet another with Philip and Sarah.

articles - The people vs people

The most important assets are people vs are the people

Could you help, please

pronunciation - /i/ sound before "ng" and "nk"

I'm a substitute teacher and recently was teaching a kindergarten class about long i sound. They were crossing out words without long i, circling words with long i. One of the words was ink. I told them no, listen , we don't say i nk (say it with a long i to see what I mean) and they crossed it out. Later, looking at the teacher's edition, it had ink circled. I thought it was just a mistake then I saw that an ink bottle was actually used as an example in the book for the long i sound. I thought something was terribly wrong so I looked it up in the dictionary—it shows i in ink as a long i sound (I looked at many dictionaries, all were the same). This can't be right, but I'm wondering if it's one if those things that's just been accepted and not questioned. Or if it's a category that hasn't been explored yet as needing a separate sound to clarify, like words with r-controlled vowels. Any comments on this would be extremely helpful.

Edit:

I realized I made a mistake with my original post and used long I all the way through. I meant to say that in ink, think, pink, thing, ring, king, etc., in other words, words ending in "nk" and "ng", the "i" is usually pronounced more like a long e sound, like e in meet. At least, that is how I have always pronounced it and heard it pronounced. I'm from California so this could be regional, but I've never heard it pronounced with a short i like in it. Fumblefingers listed words in which a short i occurs, including ink, pink, bit, fit. I definitely hear short i in bit and fit, sounds the same. In ink and pink, i does not sound the same to me, nor have I heard people say it with the same i sound as in bit. Unless the i is getting so quickly blended into the "ng" that it is almost ignored, in which case it should have a special sound category like we teach r-controlled vowels. The pronunciation rules could be very different between the US and the UK .

grammar - How do I use "will" with tense changes in this sentence?

"The board will not oust him; therefore, he remains CEO."

I'm confused. Should it be: "The board will not oust him; therefore, he will remain CEO."

Can someone explain the grammar rules here?

Answer

Just think of 'remains' as 'is still'. Does that make more sense to you?

grammar - New way of understanding the present perfect tense

I've always struggled with the present perfect tense, as probably many non-native speakers do. The way I learnt the perfect tense in school always involved these so-called signal words that one had to remember, or these time-line diagrams that were meant to show that some event in the past was still relevant at present etc. But there were always cases that just didn't fit into these pattern and this was driving me crazy.

Recently I came up with a trick how to understand the present tense. I have the feeling that it works very well for me, and makes it obvious whether or not to use the present perfect tense in an ad-hoc way without having to remember any signal words, rules or patterns.

I think it's important to understand what a native speaker "feels" linguistically when he uses this or that construction, my idea seems to be based on this fact, and I wanted to ask native speakers among you if you feel it the way I think, or if it's completely wrong. If the latter is true, do you think my method is appropriate to make sense of the present perfect tense?

My idea is to take the auxiliary word "have" more literally. When I use a similar construction in German, I don't give the word "haben" (=have) any meaning in the sense of possessing something, it's just a construction. I used to do it for the English "have" as well, and I think this is why I got confused.

Take for example "I have done my homework". The way I look at it now is that I focus on the part "I have" - I have something, I possess something, and this is happening now. What do I have? I have my homework with the attribute "done". It's like having a mental checklist with the word "homework" on it, and with the status "done", and I have it, because it's on my checklist. The difference is in breaking up the sentence, namely not "I have done" + "my homework" but rather "I have" + "my homework done".

Now using this rule I would not make the mistake and say something like "I have done my homework yesterday" (In German, for example, it would be perfectly OK to say the corresponding "Ich habe meine Hausaufgaben gestern gemacht."!) I would not say it because if I focus on the "I have" part it becomes "I have yesterday", but this does not make sense, you always have something now, and not at some point in the past, unless you say "I had done my homework yesterday", which again makes sense, and you can proceed with applying the same logic but not to the present but to some given point in the past, and gives you the past perfect tense.

It seems that this rule is analogous to the signal words like "yesterday" that we had to remember, those are just words that indicate some point in the past and lead to a contradiction when used in a similar way as above: "I have (point in the past)". So, really, instead of remembering the signal words it looks like it's easier to just get rid of the participle part of the present perfect and see if the sentence still makes sense.

Also, now it's more transparent in what way present perfect is a tense that bridges the past and the present, which those typical time-line diagrams try to illustrate. The construction consists of two parts, the auxiliary "have" + past participle. The past participle together with the corresponding object (e.g. "done homework") is a property of this object which was obtained in the past. The auxiliary "have" tells you that that object still has this property now in the present.

To sum up:

• Thinking of the auxiliary "have" in the present perfect tense as just a formal part of the construction without any meaning on its own was a mistake


• Think of the "have" as really having something.


• This something is the corresponding object with the past participle indicating its present status.

It would be really helpful to hear opinions from both native and non-native speakers about weather or not this is helpful, useful, or correct at all.

Answer

As far as it goes, your model is correct. What it depicts, in fact, is what many authorities regard as the historical origin of the perfect construction in utterances of the sort chasly from UK instances:

I have my homework finished = I have my homework in a finished state

• The standard argument is that this sort of utterance became grammaticalized in very much the same way that the periphrastic modal have to/hafta was grammaticalized from utterances of this sort:

  
  
  

  
  

  I still have my homework to do → I still have to do my homework

  
  

Do note that, as chasly from UK cogently points out, utterances of this sort are not restricted to the narrow sense "possession"; other senses of lexical HAVE may be involved. For instance

Now that we have that problem disposed of ... to have a problem means that we are presented with the problem, not that we possess the problem

And your device of treating the two components of the construction—the HAVE form and the participle—as bearers of distinct sorts of information is to my mind a happy one for pedagogic purposes. (In fact, I have adopted it myself in my discussion of the Grammatical meaning of the construction over on ell.SE.) It is not strictly true—the 'meaning' of the construction derives from the collocation, not from the atomic meanings of its parts—but it does point up the peculiar character of the English perfect: it designates a state current at reference time which arises out of a prior eventuality. And it makes it very easy to explain the "present perfect puzzle"^†: why the PrPf is not used with temporal expressions which do not include the present.

Where your model falls down is in failing to account for a number of uses to which the perfect construction has been extended since its origin in the dark backward and abysm of Old English. What you describe is the resultative or stative perfect; but there are also existential or experiential perfects ("I have often visited Paris") and continuative or universal perfects ("I have been living here since 1976"). I don't think your model will accommodate these.

(The paper by James McCawley which introduced these distinctions in 1971 also offered a Hot News perfect—"I've just won the Nobel prize!"—but this is now regarded as a special instance of existential or resultative perfects, and McCawley himself withdrew the category in 1981.)

Grammarians have been arguing about just what the perfect "means" for forty-some-odd years now. In my opinion, the most useful recent treatment is that laid out by Atsuko Nishiyama and Jean-Pierre Koenig in a series of papers culminating in “What is a perfect state?”, Language 86, 3, 2010. Nishiyama and Koenig turn their attention to the pragmatics of the perfect and conclude that

the perfect is pragmatically, rather than semantically, ambiguous. The meaning of the perfect introduces a base eventuality and a perfect state whose category is underspecified semantically. Neo-Gricean reasoning leads the hearers to appropriately fill in the value of that variable.

An earlier version of their paper is available online here, but it's formidably technical; I try to make its conclusions intelligible at §3.2 Pragmatic meaning of my post on perfects at ell.SE.

---

^† _{Named by Wolfgang Klein in 'The present perfect puzzle', Language 68 (1992), 525–552. See also Anita Mittwoch, “The purported Present Perfect Puzzle”, in D. Gorland et al. (eds), Meaning and Grammar of Nouns and Verbs, 2014.}

pronouns - Choosing between 'I' and 'me'

Which one is grammatically correct: It was me who called you., or It was I who called you.? Similarly, which one is correct among these two: He and me were going to the forest, or He and I were going to the forest?

Answer

It was me who called you and It was I who called you are both grammatical in Standard English, with the second being more formal than the first.

He and I were going to the forest is also grammatical in Standard English. He and me were going to the forest is not, but it may be found in other dialects.

grammar - "A things thing" or "a thing thing"?

This has been confusing me for quite a long time, when it comes to noun+noun form of compound nouns there are words which I see that have plural in the first noun but some stay as singular.

Some examples of compounds with plural first nouns are "admissions office" and "ladies room".
Is there a rule for when the first noun should be plural or singular?

grammar - "Would you mind to do something?"

Is it correct to say "Would you mind to do something?". I've seen this usage in a few places, but it doesn't sound right to me. I would guess that it's proper to use "Would you mind doing something?" instead.

Yet there are other verbs we could substitute here that make it sound correct with "to". For example, "Would you like to do something?" and "Would you care to do something?"

Could someone explain why "mind to" doesn't sound correct in this context, while "like to" and "care to" sound exactly right?

Answer

No, it's not correct.

The verb mind can take an Equi Gerund Complement:

• Would you mind doing something?

but not an Equi Infinitive Complement:

• *Would you mind to do something?

whence the asterisk on the second sentence, indicating that it's ungrammatical.

Verbs vary a lot in which complements (if any) they can take; this is one part of the meaning of the verb. Like and care are both verbs that can take infinitive complements; mind isn't. That's all, really.

Any good ESL dictionary should indicate which types of complement a verb can take; dictionaries for native speakers, on the other hand, usually don't mention that. One more reason not to look in dictionaries for grammatical information.

grammar - Why use "an" before a word that starts with a "L"

In this document, it says:

An LTI (Linear, Time-Invariant) system, in a simplified sense, will exhibit two behaviors

Can someone explain why the use of "An" instead "a" is correct here?

Answer

The "a" v. "an" distinction is phonetically based. If you say L T I, when you pronounce the letter L is pronounced "el" (as in the proper name "Eleanor") which starts with a vowel.

If the acronym had been dispensed with, you would have used "A" instead.

hyphenation - Is it possible to hyphenate the word "repack" (due to a line break)?

I would like to know if the word "repack" exists at least in one of the variants of the English language (i.e. British English, American English and so on), and if yes, if it can be hyphenated at the end of a line.

Personally, I believe that it exists, because I have read it several times in various articles. But I am completely unsure if it can be hyphenated at the end of a line. On one hand, Merriam-Webster does not know that word at all, Wiktionary knows it, but doesn't say anything about hyphenation, and no online hyphenation service I have tried does hyphenate it.

On the other hand, my personal feeling is that it might be possible to hyphenate it like "re-pack" at the end of a line.

Please note that I am not asking how to spell it when using it in normal text flow, i.e. if it is in one line. I am only interested in separating the word at a line end.

To make it absolutely clear, let's take another word as an example: You may hyphenate the word "power" like "pow-er", but not in normal text flow, i.e. if the word fits into the current line, but only at the end of a line, having the string "pow-" at the end of one line and the string "er" at the beginning of the next one. Of course, writing "pow-er" in the normal case, i.e. not at a line break, is wrong.

So, coming back to my actual problem, I would like to know if I can have "re-" at the end of one line and "pack" at the beginning of the next line even if no dictionary and no online hyphenation service does hyphenate that word.

Could anybody explain which rules apply here (of course, before asking, I have read some articles that gave some general guidance and that made me assume that the word in question could be hyphenated at line ends like shown above, so I just don't get why none of the online services hyphenates that word) or give a reference to a source where I can lookup correct line end hyphenations for English words (the word I have asked for is just an example - since I'm currently translating my website from German to English, there are hundreds of such cases, i.e. words whose line end hyphenation seemingly isn't shown at any source I know and which are not hyphenated by online services although I strongly believe they should).

All links I have seen in the comments so far are definitely not duplicates of my question. Without exception, they all deal with the question how you should write the respective word under normal circumstances, i.e. without a line break taking place.

pronouns - "I hope you all/both are doing well" vs "I hope you are all/both doing well"?

Do both convey the same message, or not?

1. I hope you all are doing well.



2. I hope you are all doing well.

It occurs to me that the same thing happens with both when I'm only addressing two people rather than more than two:

3. I hope you both are doing well.


4. I hope you are both doing well.

I'm sure that the first of each pair addresses more than one person, but I'm not sure if it is as “grammatically correct” as the second from each pair where the quantifier follows the verb instead of the pronoun.

I just wanted to check up on my friends but I'm not sure which one I should use; I'm a non-native speaker.

Past or present tense when talking about firsts that happened in the past?

When talking about firsts that happened in the past, is it okay to use the present tense?

For instance, if we want to talk about George Washington being the first president of the United States, could we say:
"George Washington is the first president of the United States."?

Technically he still is the first president and will be the first for the rest of time. But, he is no longer the president so should the statement be made in the past tense?

Answer

No, George Washington was the first president of the United States. The simple past (was) is used to describe an action that started and finished at a specific time in the past. The simple present (is) is used to describe a general truth ("He is tall") or a specific condition ("He is coming") that currently applies. We can certainly say that George Washington is dead, or that George Washington is a hero to many, because we are then describing a current condition. Neither would we say "John Adams is the second president of the United States," even though there will never again be a second president. Of course we do say Obama is the 44th president, but in two years, this will be He was the 44th president, even though there will never be another 44th president. In other words, the fact that something is or was the first or the second or the 44th does not matter at all.

meaning - Is listen-hear parallel with read-understand?

I'm trying to speak about the nature of music; I want to say that the very nature of the medium of sound, a kind of universal language, makes it impossible not to interpret what is presented to us. (The laws of physics make music from different cultures ultimately very similar.)

How might I express this with some interesting parallelism? I tried using the read-understand pair, but I'm not sure if this makes my meaning obvious enough. I feel like there's some word that I can't think of that would make this analogy (or another) work.

It is possible to read and not understand, but impossible to listen and not hear.

grammar - "...time to for what he wants to do..."

I came into this sentence while reading a newspaper.

Although I think it's a simple mistake overlooked by the writer,
I'd like to have a confirmation by a native speaker.

"The prince, who five years ago proposed a retirement age for
emperors, said he hoped his father would have time to for what
he wants to do, such as research of gobioid fish and music."

Have a good day

Answer

Typographical error.

Acceptable forms. This compound is the English way of expressing motion in a direction.

e.g.

[...] onto the platform

[...] into the bag

word choice - Which preposition should follow "sympathies"

I want to ask an organization:

Does your organization have any sympathies __ [such and such ideology (X)].

Which preposition should follow "sympathies?"

I was thinking "to" might work, as if their sympathies are poised in the direction of X. But "for" could work also, as if they have sympathies stored up and reserved for X.

Please help with this particular instance and also help in how to think through similar instances would be much appreciated.

Answer

Consider towards, instead. Or toward in US.

Does your organization have any sympathies towards (such and such ideologies)?

You'll find many examples for such usage on Google

grammar - Must one use a modal verb in the subjunctive mood?

Consider the following statement:

If I were you, I would go to the doctor.

As far as I know, a modal verb or a past tense can be interchangeably adopted to express the subjunctive mood. It seems, however, that most subjunctive sentences commonly prefer to use a modal verb, rather than a past tense. In conclusion, my questions are

• Is the following sentence grammatically correct?

  
  
  
  

  
  

  If I were you, I went to the doctor.

  
  




• If so, what is the reason most people prefer to use a modal verb?

Answer

It's important here to distinguish between the preterite form of a verb, and the past tense meaning that is normally associated with the preterite form. The modal preterite use of some English verbs indicates modality, as the OP points out (not past time). For example, in

I wish you went to the doctor more often than you do.

...or..

If you went to the doctor tomorrow, I'd drive you.

...use of the preterite form of the verb (went) does not indicate past time.

To answer your question (why you can't say "If I were you, I went to the doctor"), English does not grammaticalize a generic concept of modality (nor does it have a robust grammatical category "subjunctive" as French does), but instead has several common constructions that can be used to convey different types of modality. The modal preterite construction cannot be used in the same situations as a modal auxiliary can. The modal preterite expresses modal remoteness, generally in one of the two types of constructions:

• Conditional constructions. (e.g., If she injured herself, I'd rush to help.)


• Expressing a counterfactual situation, but only in subordinate clauses which complement specific verbs that have an element of uncertainty in their meaning (e.g., wish, think).

Auxiliary verbs can be used to convey a larger range of modal meanings (with different auxiliaries having different modal meanings associated), some of which include remoteness. In a sentence like "I would go to the doctor (If I were you)," would expresses two types of modality: propensity (lexically) and remoteness (preterite form).

grammaticality - "You were the one who was surprised you liked it"

"You were the one who was surprised you liked it"

What is it about this sentence that makes it sound clumsy?

I'm not sure about specific grammatical rules that should be applied to this sentence, or if there is simply a more elegant way to express the meaning here.

---

The intention of the sentence being that:

Roger recalls that Susan recently tried banana muffins for the first time and liked them.

Susan suggests presently that Roger is a fiend for banana muffins and can't eat enough banana muffins.

Susan says to Roger: "You do like your muffins, don't you dear."

Roger would like to remind Susan that she too liked banana muffins, maybe even more so than she would care to admit.

Roger says to Susan: "You were the one who was surprised you liked them".

Answer

It sounds clumsy to me because it is just a statement. The impression is robotic. It sounds less clumsy and more appropriate when it is asked as a question.

Consider:

Roger says to Susan: "Weren't you the one who was surprised you

liked them"?

Hope this helps.

phrases - What is the correct use of "at the age of" or similar for describing a group of people?

Recently, for a scientific publication, I wrote something like the following:

The sample consisted of all students at the age of 13 years or older.

However, I received this back from the language check changed into the following:

The sample consisted of all students who were 13 years of age or older.

While I see that the second versions indeed sounds a little nicer, I was wondering if the first version would be correct from a grammatical point of view when it is used for describing a group of people as opposed to, say, for describing the age of a person at which an event has occured.

Can I use "at the age of" for describing a group of people? If not, would anyone able to clarify the correct use of this phrase?

Answer

Since this is a scientific paper, if you wanted to include the number, you could also say "consisted of all students who were 13 years of age or older (n=158)."

A phrase often used to describe an age group is cohort:

(definition 6)
a group of persons sharing a particular statistical or demographic characteristic: the cohort of all children born in 1980

Here is a picture using "age cohort" to illustrate.

So I might rewrite the sentence as:

The sample consisted of all students (n=158) in the age cohort over 13.

syntactic analysis - placement of 'per year' in a sentence

In the first sentence, the term ‘per year’ is placed within the sentence and in the second sentence, at the end.

Which pattern is correct and which one is wrong?

1. The business purchases about 24 tons of hosiery waste as raw material per year from different suppliers located mainly in Dhaka district.




2. The business purchases about 20 tons of raw materials from different suppliers located mainly in Dhaka district per year.

word choice - What is the difference between seems like /seems that/seems?

Is there any difference between these expressions?

It seems like they have not completed the task yet.

It seems that they have not completed the task yet.

It seems they haven't completed the task yet.

syntactic analysis - The fine line between stilted and sloppy

I received a comment to one of my questions that I would like to elaborate on.

Because the inversion of word order in the original makes it sound a little stilted

The original question yielded two possible ways of expressing the same thing and Robusto regarded the former one as the more stilted.

Neither I am, nor was I ever, nor will I ever be

I am not, have never been, and never will be

I understand that point of view, but as I am trying to improve my understanding of English literature as a non-native speaker, I would like to know how other people think about this issue.

I would have thought that the former statement is more literary whilst the latter would be used in a casual dialogue.

Is this true? How can I decide which one to choose, and when would a variant be considered inappropriate?

Answer

These two examples exhibit anacolouthon: "Neither I am,... " ought to be followed by "...nor he is, nor she is..." The result is broken English. These sentences might be workable in fiction, precisely to show that the speaker was very emotional and slightly incoherent.

*Neither I am, nor ever was I, nor I ever will be [...]

*Neither I am, nor was I ever, nor will I ever be [...]

The next two answers are acceptable, but very formal, and slightly archaic. (This heaviness undermines the asseveration, and doubt creeps in: "Methinks he doth protest too much...")

I neither am, nor ever was, nor ever will be ....
(@Karasinsky)

Neither am I, nor was I ever, nor will I ever be ...
(@ Robusto)

It would be stronger and more emphatic to choose one of these two suggestions, and be direct.

I am not, have never been, and never will be ...
(@Robusto)

I am not now, never was, and never will be...
(@ Little Eva )

(The examples have been taken from this and a previous post, and if the contributors agree I shall convert this to Community Wiki.)

Singular and plural possessive of "species"

I need to construct a sentence, in which I'm referring to a feature of each of the animals in a given species. I don't quite know what the possessive of species should be, both in singular and plural.

Example:
(Talking about a single species with fuzzy ears.)

The species' ears are notably fuzzy.

Is the above correct? What if I had to mention multiple species all having fuzzy ears?

sequence of tenses - Optional vs obligatory back shifting

Consider two sentences -
1) I didn't know that X is a Russian.
2) I didn't know that X was a Russian.

My question is, under the condition that X is still Russian, can sentence 1) be used ?

Thanks.

single word requests - To mention the topic a book deals with, is it correct to say that 'a book talks about something'?

To mention the topic of a book, I can say that such and such a book is about something or that it tells about something.

Can I say that it talks about something?

Ngram-viewer-ing the book is about, the book tells about, and the book talks about indicates that using tell and talk are far less common than be in this context.

ngram viewer: the book is about, tells about, talks about

Talk sounds weird to me because you do not talk to/with a book: language, information only flow one way, from the book to you; reading a book is not having a conversation with it!

Answer

You're right to say that books don't normally talk, electronic children's books aside. The phrase the book talks about is a metonymic reference to the author of the book. That is, the book is in a sense the author's monologue and therefore the 'voice' of the author.

So the phrase the book talks about X means the author talks (or writes) about that subject in the book.

Talk sounds weird to me because you do not talk with a book, language, information only flow one way, from the book to you; reading a book is not having a conversation with it!

The phrase talks about is different from talks with. The former refers to a one-way flow of information as you describe, while the latter implies a two-way flow. So there is no inconsistency between saying the books talks about some subject and saying that you're not carrying out a two-way conversation with it.

grammaticality - How should an imperative sentence with multiple verb phrases and differing prepositions be worded?

The following are two version of a tagline.

Ask questions and share your unique knowledge about trains with the hobbyist community.

and

Ask questions about and share your unique knowledge on trains with the hobbyist community.

I would never say "Ask questions with..." so are these grammatically incorrect or just awkward? Is there a better way to word this without breaking it into two sentences?

The goal of the author was to have "hobbyist community" apply to both verb phrases. The desired meaning is as follows.

Ask the hobbyist community questions about trains and share your unique knowledge of trains with the hobbyist community.

However, that's a little long and redundant for a tagline. The only smooth wording I have come up with is the following.

Ask questions about trains and share your unique knowledge with the hobbyist community.

However, that changes the intended meaning somewhat.

Answer

The noun phrase the hobbyist community applies to both things: asking questions and sharing knowledge.

But the problem is that you ask questions of the community and you share your knowledge with the community. There's also the problem that you more naturally ask questions about trains and share your knowledge of trains.

Because each of these things result in a different formation, it's very awkward to have a single sentence where both parts make use of a common set of prepositions.

This can only really be avoided by not relying on a common set of prepositions. In doing this, the noun phrase also needs to be brought to the start of the sentence:

The hobbyist community where you ask questions about and share unique knowledge of trains.

But even though this is better (it now makes sense), and it retains all of the information in the original sentence, it's still a little lengthy and difficult to parse.

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Since sharing can imply both questions and answers, it could be combined into just that single thing, making the assumption that knowledge sharing means asking and answering questions.

As before, the noun phrase could be at the start of the sentence:

The hobbyist community where unique knowledge of trains is shared.

Another possibility keeps the emphasis on the person with the noun phrase at the end:

Share your unique knowledge of trains with the hobbyist community.

But both of those versions essentially dismiss the original first part of the sentence.

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Alternatively, asking questions could be retained if sharing is replaced with answering questions and knowledge is dropped (in order to keep it simple). Also as before, the noun phrase is moved to the start of the sentence:

The unique hobbyist community where you ask and answer questions about trains.

Or, depending on the emphasis:

The hobbyist community where you ask and answer unique questions about trains.

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Of course, there are several variations of all of these examples.

grammar - In "Enter John", is John in the nominative or accusative case?

This question made me think about the structure of the sentence.

I'm familiar with the expression 'Enter Michael'/'Exit John' to represent Michael's or John's entry or exit, respectively, to a dramatic stage, and its metaphorical use.

Is this a real sentence, or a sentence fragment? Either way, should John be treated as the subject of the sentence, and put in the nominative case? I realise that this makes little practical difference as English words are not typically declined based on case, and "exit him" or "Enter I" sounds wrong either way. However I am curious.

Initially I had thought that "exit" might be the subjunctive, and that the phrase was equivalent to "Let John exit". But the plural of "exit" in stage directions is "exeunt", and both "exit" and "exeunt" are present indicative in Latin.

Answer

My interpretation is that we are looking at a nominative. Here is why.
The key to the noun case lies I believe in the analysis of the verb inflection.

One first need to acknowledge that scene directions in play-texts used to take various forms¹.

1. All Latin:
   
   
   
   • Present indicative mood: intrat/intrant and exit/exeunt. In which case the characters are in nominative case.
   
   
   • Present subjective mood: exeat/exeant (nominative as well)
   
   
   For instance in exeunt omnes as you note, exeunt is the 3rd person plural of the present indicative of the verb exeo.
   In theory, omnes is possibly the masculine plural nominative, vocative or accusative of omnis.
   Since exeunt is not an imperative, we can rule out vocative.
   Since exeunt is a plural we can rule out accusative - if it were an accusative we would have exit omnes, not exeunt omnes, some kind of "there exit all".


2. Mixed English/Latin:
   
   
   • Present indicative mood: Entreth[enters]/enter (singular plural) and exit/exeunt. For instance "Enters the King". The King is a nominative case (note that the verb is inflected as a 3rd person singular).
   
   
   • If we read Enter John, one could interpret enter as an imperative in which case John is a vocative. but that doesn't square up with exit (a Latin indicative - the imperative would be exi or exito) and seems awkward in the case of "Enter the King".
     There is another explanation though. I would venture that since exit is both a Latin 3rd person singular and an English infinitive, the enter form is a symmetric infinitive. Said otherwise, the exit started as a Latin indicative and was retained because it looked like an English infinitive. This would explain the weird mix of English and Latin (enter is no Latin word of course). In this case, the noun is in the nominative case.
     
   
   
   
   

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Note 1
A Japanese professor of European literature named Mariko Ichikawa has actually devoted a (freely available) whole article to Shakespearean Entrances. Here is a short excerpt:

A survey of stage directions in early English renaissance plays shows that the use of the English direction 'Enter' (presented in the imperative mood and used for either one or more characters) along with the Latin direction 'Exit'/'Exeunt' (in the present indicative mood) was not completely established until the early or mid-1590s. Some of the earliest surviving play-texts basically employ the convention of massing the names of all the characters who appear in any given scene in one list at its opening, without the word 'enter' or its equivalent, in imitation of the printed form of Roman comedy current in the Renaissance. Some almost exclusively use the Latin directions: 'intrat'/'intrant' (in the present indicative mood) and either 'exeat'/'exeant' (in the present subjective mood) or 'exit'/'exeunt'. Others normally use vernacular verbs such as 'come in' and 'go out', and 'enter' and 'go out'. 'Entreth[enters]'/'enter' (singular plural) and 'exit'/'exeunt' are usually found[...]

punctuation - When should I use an em-dash, an en-dash, and a hyphen?

I generally know how to use a hyphen, but when should I use an en-dash (–) instead of an em-dash, or when should I use a hyphen (-) instead of an em-dash (—)?

Answer

An em-dash is typically used as a stand-in for a comma or parenthesis to separate out phrases—or even just a word—in a sentence for various reasons (e.g. a parenthetical; an ersatz-ellipsis). Examples where an em-dash should be used:

• School is based on the three R’s—reading, writing, and ’rithmetic.


• Against all odds, Pete—the unluckiest man alive—won the lottery.


• I sense something; a presence I've not felt since—

An en-dash is used to connect values in a range or that are related. A good rule is to use it when you're expressing a "to" relationship. Examples where an en-dash should be used:

• in years 1939–1945


• pages 31–32 may be relevant


• New York beat Los Angeles 98–95


• When American English would use an em-dash – following British and Canadian conventions.

A hyphen is used to join words in a compound construction, or separate syllables of a word, like during a line break, or (self-evidently) a hyphenated name.

• pro-American


• cruelty-free eggs


• em-dash


• it's pronounced hos-pi-tal-it-tee


• Olivia Newton-John

The minus sign is distinct from all three of the above.

• 4 − 2 = 2.

If you want to use the correct dash or hyphen in comments, just use the appropriate HTML entity: — for em-dash, – for en-dash, and − for the minus sign. The hyphen is, of course, directly on your keyboard.

Figure dash

The figure dash (‒) is so named because it is the same width as a digit, at least in fonts with digits of equal width. This is true of most fonts, not only monospaced fonts.

The figure dash is used within numbers (e.g. phone number 555‒0199), especially in columns for maintaining alignment. Its meaning is the same as a hyphen, as represented by the hyphen-minus glyph; by contrast, the en dash is more appropriately used to indicate a range of values; the minus sign also has a separate glyph.

The figure dash is often unavailable; in this case, one may use a hyphen-minus instead. In Unicode, the figure dash is U+2012 (decimal 8210). HTML authors must use the numeric forms ‒ or ‒ to type it unless the file is in Unicode; there is no equivalent character entity.