Should smiley be merged into quotation marks as if it were punctuation?
I don't like to "move it, move it ;-)."
cf. Did she say "you shall?"
Or be kept outside quotation marks, as a word?
I don't like to "move it, move it" ;-)
cf. Sure you can "move it, move it" wink
This is from NYTimes:
And again and again, and closer and closer, it returns to a speeding commuter train, a recurrence that artfully foreshadows the story’s nifty repetition compulsion.
How can this sentence end with two nouns? What does “nifty repetition compulsion” mean?
Answer
Yes, this is grammatical. The first noun is acting like an adjective. As Colin notes, you can't always put a noun in a the same position as an adjective bu it does work as 'N N'.
'Cheese casserole' isn't a casserole that happens to have a lot of cheese (which is what is implied by 'cheesy casserole'); somehow 'cheese ' is essential to the casserole that is a 'cheese casserole'.
The official term for this usage of a noun as a modifier is Noun Adjunct.
It is not an Adjectival Noun which is the other direction, an adjective that acts like a noun.
Having settled into a new job in communications, I am faced with the issue of em dashes. Since I am quite partial to commas but my boss is more partial to em dashes, I can't help but wonder whether her usage isn’t incorrect.
I’ve done a bit of research on this, and I have found it’s most commonly used in emphasizing a thought. It can also be used to offset lists or at the end of an independent clause.
However, if I receive a sentence like this:
Dean London —a business unit of Centrell— have been supplying permeable products to Caramba Unit —a supplier of biological products — since 2009.
I would say that this usage is incorrect, and I would edit it to use commas because this is additional information that isn’t a separate thought needing emphasizing.
Another example:
This initiative —led by Dr. Reiv Nadar and integrated into Dean's research and design unit— intends to gather post-harvest disease control information.
Is the usage of em dashes in this instance correct, or would it be better to use commas?
Not sure whether the problem is actually just that I am confused about the correct usage of em dashes, but I figured you guys could help clarify those.
I have a doubt of using the article (the) in the following context. Please tell me which version of the following two sentences is correct?.
1. A child pulled out **the** grass in the park near my home. [the grass]
2. A child pulled out grass in the park near my home. [grass]
Answer
Both are fully grammatical.
The second refers to some unspecified grass in the part that the child pulled, while the first indicates either all the grass in the park, or some particular grass that the hearer is expected to know.
What happened to them, and how were they once used? Straining my mind to sound archaic, I came up with the following:
Dost thou thinkest thou can escape thy sins?
and
Bringeth me mine armor and favorite sword.
I’d like to use these suffixes intelligently, so my questions are:
how are ‑est and ‑eth properly appellated in conjugations, and
when and why did they disappear?
Answer
Verb paradigm in King James English for think
Singular Plural
--------------------------
1 (I) think (we) think
2 (thou) thinkest (you) think
3 (he) thinketh (they) think
Imperative: think
Infinitive: (to) think
These unfamiliar suffixes are applied in the same context that the -s suffix is applied in Modern English; for example:
- He thinks.
Thou thinkest.
He shall go. (no -s suffix on go)
- Thou shalt go. (irregular verb form for shall; but again, no suffix on go)
During the Early Modern English period, the 2nd person singular suffix disappeared and the -th suffix in the third person was replaced by another suffix, -s, which spread from dialects in the northern parts of the country. Other conjugations, such as -e in the first person singular from Middle English, had already been lost.
This sort of change is known as paradigm leveling. There is no particular reason per se that this kind of change happens, but it is not uncommon in the languages of the world.
The funding need will extend through the year 2020 when construction of the permanent facilities is projected to be complete.
My boss insists I should use are instead of is. I disagree. Any recommendations?
Is "need of religion" grammatically incorrect as opposed to "need for religion"?
Or "need of salt" vs. "need for salt"?
Answer
With "of":
have need of: This is very formal usage, though, as simply using "need" would suffice
They had need of shelter.
in need of: This is more commonly used in everyday English
I am in need of clothing.
With "for":
There is [a] need for discipline in the classroom.
There is [an] urgent need for discipline in the classroom.
I have a need for food.
I have no need for spiritual enlightenment.
Suppose that Eve said (in spoken English)
An apple a day keeps the doctor away, unquote. Also isn't Eve such a
great person? Like my mom always said quote Eve is the best person ever,
much better than that Alice person
Now let us say that Bob wants to tell Alice what Eve said. Naively, he might say
Eve said the weirdest thing the other day. She said quote An apple a
day keeps the doctor away, unquote. Also isn't Eve such a great
person? Like my mom always said quote Eve is the best person ever,
much better than that Alice person unquote. What do you suppose it
means?
The problem with saying this is that Alice would interpret this as
Eve said the weirdest thing the other day. She said "An apple a day
keeps the doctor away." Also isn't Eve such a great person? Like my
mom always said "Eve is the best person ever, much better than that
Alice person." What do you suppose it means?
Whereas Bob actually meant
Eve said the weirdest thing the other day. She said "An apple a day
keeps the doctor away, unquote. Also isn't Eve such a great person?
Like my mom always said quote Eve is the best person ever, much better
than that Alice person." What do you suppose it means?
How would Bob properly quote Eve without causing the above ambiguity?
Note that this problem only really applies to spoken English, since if instead Bob was writing a letter to Alice, he could write
Eve said the weirdest thing the other day. She said "An apple a day
keeps the doctor away, unquote. Also isn't Eve such a great person?
Like my mom always said quote Eve is the best person ever, much better
than that Alice person." What do you suppose it means?
and if Eve instead used quotation marks, there are already conventions for dealing with that.
Answer
To resolve ambiguity in spoken English (and, I’d expect, in any other language), use appropriate framing / context.
To use your example, Bob could say:
Eve said the weirdest thing the other day.
She said, “An apple a day keeps the doctor away,” then she said the word, “unquote”. Then she referred to herself in the third person, saying, “Also isn't Eve such a great person?” Eve then quotes her mother by saying, “Like my mom always said quote Eve is the best person ever, much better than that Alice person”.
As you can see, this gets messy pretty quickly.
In practice, it would be easier to quote the relevant parts, simplifying the commentary.
What is the rule on the use of commas in a series?
Is it medical, dental, and behavioural or medical, dental and behavioural?
I was talking to a friend of mine over Skype, and I typed this:
Ok... Now I want more pork pie.
I'd like to know, should there be a capital letter after the ellipsis "…"? Should it be written the way I typed it:
Ok... Now I want more pork pie.
Or should it be a lowercase "n":
Ok... now I want more pork pie.
Do ellipses break a sentence so that a new one must be started after them (hence the capital "N"), or do they behave similarly to commas and dashes in that they serve as a "pause", with a lowercase "n"?
Answer
Most writers would use a comma in OP's example, not an ellipsis. So the issue wouldn't arise there anyway. Probably the writer intended "Okay...blah blah" to make the reader "internally vocalise" it as "Okaaaaaay, blah blah".
In general, it really depends on whether you consider the ellipsis represents an "empty" pause at the end of a preceding sentence. If so, what follows is a new sentence, and it starts with a capital letter.
If you think the ellipsis represents a delay within an as-yet-incomplete sentence, but you've decided you don't want indicate that delay using some other punctuation (comma, semicolon, etc.), then just continue the sentence without a capital.
Effectively, it's partly the exact context, and partly stylistic preference. I'd say if in doubt, consider using a comma instead of an ellipsis. If that doesn't feel right, you should probably capitalise.
The sentence
The user “john_smith” has been registered; go to the “User Profile” tab to view the user’s details.
reads more naturally to me than
The “john_smith” user has been registered; go to the tab “User Profile” to view the user’s details.
but I’m not sure why. In particular, it seems wrong for john_smith to go before the word user, whereas User Profile can go either before or after the word tab (although it seems to flow a little better when it’s before).
What rules of grammar apply here?
UPDATE 5/19/2018: I’ve changed “John Smith” to “john_smith” to help clarify that it is supposed to be a unique “username” assigned to a new user.
I'm writing a bibliography with the following two entries (written so far as shown):
I. Early modern authors and editors of late antique texts:
a. 16th-18th century editions of late antique writers
b. Primary
sources (16th – 19th centuries)
I'm aware that in general different style guides will have different notation concerning the dash and the hyphen. The question here is whether the different notation here is justified within the same bibliography.
I have done some google searches and found entries that correspond to both, e.g.
a. 16th-18th century music
b. books of the 15th – 18th centuries
As I see it, in the first case (the block text above) 16th-18th century is an adjective modifying 'editions' while the second one refers to primary sources spanning the 16th to 19th centuries -- thus the different notation. In any case I'm slightly confused and would welcome explanation/comment.
Answer
The key to any stylistic choice is to remain consistent. As such, as when representing a date range, you should pick a stylistic device and stick to it in all instances—unless there is a very specific reason to deviate in a particular instance.
When it comes to date ranges, most style guides recommend using an en dash rather than hyphen. Also typically, this is closed—there is no space on either side of the dash. (Where the em dash would normally be used in the US, the UK would use an en dash with a space on either side—thereby distinguishing it from an en dash without spaces.)
The Chicago Manual of Style (17th ed.), 6.78, says:
The principal use of the en dash is to connect numbers and, less often, words. With continuing numbers—such as dates, times, and page numbers—it signifies up to and including (or through).
Given that, considering just the date range itself, you should likely pick one of the following styles (which I'm listing in order of what I'd say is most common to least common) and use it consistently.
En dash (closed):
a. 16th–18th century editions of late antique writers
b. Primary sources (16th–19th centuries)
Hyphen:
a. 16th-18th century editions of late antique writers
b. Primary sources (16th-19th centuries)
En dash (open):
a. 16th – 18th century editions of late antique writers
b. Primary sources (16th – 19th centuries)
As for the adjectival modification in the first sentence, conventional styling might say to add a hyphen between the date range and century:
a. 16th–18th-century editions of late antique writers
However, while hyphenation in a compound (barring adverbs ending in -ly or open-compound phrases) is never wrong, it can sometimes look awkward in a way that is more negative than the meaning the hyphenation is trying to clarify. In this case, it's doubtful that anyone would misunderstand the phrase if the hyphenation were removed.
I wouldn't say it's a problem if you don't use a hyphen between the date range and century.
In short, it's up to you how you want to punctuate the date range. The more common styling is with a closed en dash, but that doesn't mean you can't choose something else. However, it is a good idea to remain consistent and not mix your date-range punctuation from one sentence to the next.
Here is a quote from "Ever Wonder Why / the color red angers a bull? " (page 20).
It has been suggested that this reaction to red (my note: of bull which is color-blind to a shaking cape in red) may be due to its being the color of blood.
My question : the above "its" should be "it"?
In a series of three items (e,g. "I have a big, a small and a medium sized dog."), do you include a comma after the second item in the series and before the conjunction (in this example after the word "small")? Is this comma optional?
Which one of the following is correct?
- Cricket chauvinism runs across two axes, those of nation and generation.
- Cricket chauvinism runs on two axes, those of nation and generation.
Answer
Neither; even metaphorically, things don't "run across" or "run on" axes, they generally either "run along" axes or "revolve around", "revolve on", "turn around" or "turn on" axes.
Here is a Google Ngram showing that "revolve around", "revolve on", and "run along" are all used, but that "run on" and "run across" are rare.
I'm confused why the use of "increases" in the following sentence is incorrect --- I intuitively think it should be "increase" instead, but can't quite explain why I think so.
High consumption of trans fat is dangerous: not only does it increases
your LDL cholesterol level, it also decreases your HDL cholesterol.
My confusion is exacerbated by the fact that "high consumption of trans fat is dangerous: it increases your LDL cholesterol level" seems grammatically correct, and the use of "decreases" in the sentence above also seems correct.
Answer
You're quite right that it should be increase.
It's a basic rule of grammar that the verb should agree in number with its subject, which is why we use "is" (subject is singular noun phrase "high consumption of trans fat") and "decreases" (subject is "it") in the sentence.
However, the construction "not only does it increase your LDL cholesterol" is a bit deceptive, because the use of "not only" in a declarative sentence requires an inverted word order. The verb here is does, which as an auxiliary combines with the bare infinitive (in this case, "increase"). The subject is the singular "it", which because of the inversion comes after the auxiliary verb. The format is therefore:
Not only [auxillary verb] [subject] [bare infinitive] [object]...
Hence:
Not only [does] [it] [increase] [your LDL cholesterol level]...
Which Sunday do you prefer, if Sunday is OK with you?
Is the above sentence grammatically correct and natural? I'd like answers both from BrE and AmE speakers.
Sorry for my short, abrupt question. I do have my own opinion about this issue, but I'm remaining silent on purpose in order not to mislead you into saying things in favor of my potentially preconceived ideas.
By the way, I've asked the same question elsewhere as well. It's not that I don't trust the answerers there. It's just that the English learners around me may not trust me as a reliable source of information about the English language. I've been giving them my answer but they probably need confirmation from multiple sources.
Please note I'm not asking you to proofread the text. I wanted to ask you if the usage of the second "Sunday" is grammatically correct, idiomatic and natural. I was thinking that the usage of the second "Sunday" was wrong. It sounds unnatural. It is because, to me, it seems that if the speaker wants to ask whether there is any Sunday the other person is available, then (if he has to use this structure at all) he has to say "if a Sunday is OK with you" (with an indefinite article in it).
Thank you very much for your time.
If I am asked, who is going to the wedding? can I just say "I"?
Is there a word for a set of questions that are asked together and are related? For example, one asks the question:
Do you go rafting?
And follow up with:
If yes, where?
If no, what do you do instead?
I'd like a word that represents this collection of questions, some of which are meaningless outside of their grouping. Is there such a word?
I have a couple of ideas in mind (linked here so I can limit influencing your opinion).
I'm looking for something much smaller than an interview (which is a larger collection of loosely-related questions), and different from a page (which is a physical arrangement of questions).
Answer
A few options, some admittedly phrases and also various forms:
Is there a "rule" or pattern for the pronunciation of "nt" in the middle of words, followed by a vowel (or "er" sound)?
Here's what I have so far:
1) "t" is often omitted in words like "wanted," "mental," and "international" when "nt" is followed by a vowel or an "er" sound.
2) If the syllable following the "nt" is stressed, the "t" is pronounced: "integrity," "intoxicated," and "intact"
3) In words with "int," the "t" is sometimes obligatory, such as in "interrogation" and "interpretation," BUT it is not obligatory in others like "interception." The only pattern I see so far is that when the root word has a stressed syllable following the "nt," this carries over into the longer forms of the word. For example, "inTERRogate" is pronounced with a "t" and "interrogation" is also pronounced with a "t" (even though the syllable following the "nt" is no longer stressed).
4) In words like "attention," the "ti" is pronounced as /ʃ/ ("sh").
Can anyone think of additional examples or rules? Are there any examples which would contradict my reasoning so far?
I understand that "who" is for the subject and "whom" is for the object. However, sometimes they are used as the only word in a sentence. For example:
Person 1: Yeah, he ate the entire cake.
Person 2: Who(m)?
Which form is correct? I can see it being short for both "Who is the person who ate the cake?" and "Whom are you talking about?"
Answer
In this example, it should definitely be who.
A single word question like that is typically seen, grammatically, as an ellipsis for a full-sentence version, as you say. But elided words/phrases are almost always things which have already just been said, so following “He ate the entire cake,” the natural ellipsis would be “Who [ate the entire cake]?”, not “Whom [are you talking about]?”.
Even in cases where it would make formal sense, though, “Whom?” is rarely used alone:
The tiger ate him up entirely!
Who?
“Whom did the tiger eat?” or “Ate whom?” sound fine to my ear (as do their equivalents with “who”), but “Whom?” alone sounds quite stiltedly pedantic. As ShreevatsaR has described very well, whom is — while not obsolete yet — certainly of limited use, and when in doubt, who is pretty much always an acceptable alternative nowadays, and is often more idiomatic.
When you have a moment, could you please send over next Wednesday’s campaign info?
Double-checking a couple details before it goes live to make sure the client is happy!
The above sentences are from an e-mail. In the last sentence, I know what the author want to say. But, I wonder how it would be read to general readers.
(a) I want to double-check ...
(b) Double-checking a couple details before it goes makes sure that ...
(c) It is for double-checking ....
Or if something was omitted, what would be omitted?
I’ve always thought it grammatically wrong to use “that” to introduce non-defining relative clauses, after a comma, or after a preposition.
The following two sentences, however, use “that” after a comma and they still sound idiomatic to me.
- “It’s no use repeating the obvious things, that have been said by others, and that can be found in any encyclopedia.”
- “That’s the person, if I’m not mistaken, that we were talking about."
Can it be that, contrary to what I think, “that” can be used after a comma? Or is it just the wrong use of a comma where there should be none? It’s true that in the second example “that” introduces a defining relative clause. But it doesn't appear to be so in the first example.
Edit - I'm not asking for a more natural way of saying things. What I'm asking is:
1. Are these sentences grammatical? Should we use "which" in the second sentence?
2. Is it wrong to place the comma before "that"?
3. Is it wrong to use "that" to introduce a non-restrictive clause as in the first sentence?
The questions Difference between 'which' and 'that' in restrictive (defining) relative clauses and Are there rules about using "that" to join two clauses? and The usage of "that" as a relative pronoun have some good answers on when to use or to omit “that” but they do not address these specific points.
Answer
tldr: What’s written is ok, and I’ll show you what it means.
Grammar is something that falls out of the spoken language, not the written one. Punctuation is unrelated to grammar except in that rare circumstance when it signals an audible intonation change meant to alert the listener to some change in the actual underlying grammar. Those cases are hard to come up with, but do exist. All punctuation is just cues for hearing the real language in your head better.
Therefore by that metric, not only is there nothing wrong with the punctuation as written, there cannot be, and no matter how it is written.
So try saying your first example aloud in your head, which I will here write without commas because voices have no commas, just intonation:
This is a restrictive that here, which you can tell because it can be substituted by which with no change in meaning or permissibility:
We can’t use that in descriptive clauses but we can use both that and which in restrictive ones, so if you can swap them, you know what you have. And the other way around, too. This is grammatical whether with or without its comma:
But this is ungrammatical again no matter whether you write the comma or not:
That one is wrong because it tried to use that for a descriptive clause, and you can only use which for those. The native ear goes HUH? when it hears it, which is what makes it ungrammatical.
As you see, it’s never its punctuation which makes something grammatical or ungrammatical. It’s whether you the right worms oops I mean words have managed to put together right — which this sentence almost did not. Twice. :) It had almost managed not to put the right words together, twice.
As you observe, we do not usually use commas before restrictive clauses in English because there is no intonation change to signal there. Presuming that the writer was a competent one, this means the writer was trying to signal something else by including intonation dips. I believe that what he was signalling was an apocopated version of two appositives, which I’ll use em dashes to set off with a repeated things:
If you read his punctuation there, the commas, as an indicator of appositives the same way as they’re used for that in this sentence, his pauses will make much more sense. It’s not especially common, so it’s no wonder it caught your eye, but I believe that there is a legitimate reading where it makes perfect sense.
As for this one:
Here you have to read this for syntactic constituents. The phrase if I’m not mistaken is a parenthetical aside. It could have been written:
So the commas are the same as parens or dashes: they’re there to surround the parenthetical statement. Since in the spoken language you cannot hear any punctuation, this cannot change the grammar. They’re just there to help the reader.
These too are all ok:
All those are fine. About the only thing you can’t do is say:
Because which cannot function there to start the clause to serve as the object of a preposition.
Don’t allow some simple, perhaps simplistic, mnemonic tip for good writing style such as “don’t use a comma before that” confuse you about the larger surrounding issues or about a sentence’s actual grammar. Such tips exist to break a common pattern in beginning writers unfamiliar with the conventions normally observed in these things. But rest assured that the actual grammar remains intact no matter the punctuation, for any grammatical error will jump out to your ear without seeing the punctuation — just like in my very last bulleted example sentence above, the one with the extra asterisk.
I have never heard anyone use words "fewer" and "more" when talking about the fact that a certain number of items is greater than a certain number of other items by a constant.
For example if the number of pens that I have is greater than the number of pencils by 5 what is the proper way to say it without using the word "number". Is it "I have 5 more pens than pencils." And "I have 5 fewer pencils than pens." Both of these sentences sound extremely weird and I doubt they are correct, so, what is the proper way of saying these 2 sentences?
Answer
Both sentences are grammatically correct.
"I have 5 more pens than pencils."
"I have 5 fewer pencils than pens."
For the record, they sound fine to me as well as a native English speaker who regularly has to compare numbers and quantities.
Oxford dictionaries includes "fewer than 50 people" in an example of word usage.
The Germans have doch and the French have si as a word that means "yes" in response to a negative question, such as:
Don't you want some ice-cream?
Yes [I do]!
In English, we only have yes (as far as I know) and further clarification is required in order to be unambiguous.
Did we ever have such a word in English and, if so, what happened to it? If not, given the French and Germanic influences on English, any idea why not?
Answer
Such words existed in Early Modern English (roughly 1450–1650), and they were… yes and no. However, the answers to positive questions at the time were yea and nay. You could summarize their use as such:
- Will he not go? — Yes, he will.
- Will he not go? — No, he will not.
- Will he go? — Yea, he will.
- Will he go? — Nay, he will not.
It is well detailed in this Wikipedia page (which I first read in an answer by z7sg earlier today):
Whilst Modern English has a two-form system for affirmatives and negatives, Early Modern English in fact had a four-form system, comprising the words yea, nay, yes, and no. [...] The answers to positively framed questions ("Will he go?") were yea and nay, whilst the answers to negatively framed questions ("Will he not go?") were yes and no. This subtle grammatical nicety of Early Modern English is recorded by Sir Thomas More in his critique of William Tyndale's translation of the New Testament into Early Modern English.
As you noted Modern French, as other languages, has a three-form system where both negative answers are the same (oui is the affirmative answer to a positive question, si is the affirmative answer to a negative question, and non is the negative answer to any type of question).
The query might return a list of selected items in a shopping cart, or posts in active forums threads, or whatever your web application needs to retrieve from your database.
active forums is functioning as an adjective here. It is obvious, of course. But what I can't get is why does it end in s making it plural? Could it be written like active forum threads? If so, what would the difference be? And I have certainly many times come across nouns ending in s used as adjectives but never really understood the reasons why there was a particular need to make them plural instead of leaving them in their singular form.
Answer
There is no need for the plural. Most likely the writer thought the singular form, active forum threads, might be misinterpreted as active threads rather than threads in active forums. But the problem is easily solved with a hyphen: active-forum threads.
Under what condition should we use "that" as the required and ONLY relative pronoun?
Please give some examples.
Thanks!
I have a little issue with the use of zero versus definite article, since I tend to abuse the former one.
Consider the following sentences:
- The issue described above influences the quality of software.
- This general issue affects the speed of applications.
- This affects the reliability of hardware.
The use of software, applications and hardware seems to me 'general', so according to what I know about english grammar, zero article should be used.
Suppose to add an adjective to 'specialize' such nouns, but still staying relatively general (i.e., not referring to specific applications).
- The issue described above influences the quality of the? produced software.
- This general issue affects the speed of the? deployed applications.
- This affects the reliability of the? produced hardware.
In these last cases, is it mandatory to use the definite article or is zero article still acceptable? Is there grammar reference that justifies the answer?
I mean, it's not like there is a tuna vegetable or animal that it can be confused with.
Answer
I agree with you that it does seem redundant. However, this is common with other kinds of fish as well. Many people say "codfish" instead of "cod". Here is a recipe for "trout fish" croquets.
This convention has important meaning to a huge number of fish names: catfish, lionfish, swordfish, sunfish, cowfish, etc.
Also, it provides extra clarification for someone who wouldn't know what a "tuna" or a "cod" is otherwise. Anyone learning English as a second language will probably learn the meaning of "fish" early on, but may not know the more specific names.
Which one is correct?
- An apple is green.
- Apple is green.
- The apple is green.
Please describe for me.
Answer
An apple is green.
This is correct when you are talking about a member of a group, something general, for example, fruit. An orange is orange, but an apple is green. A/an is an indefinite article.
Apple is green. This is an unusual sentence, but it could be true if apple is the name of a green child (think Gweneth Paltrow), or you are referring to the color apple. (There is a color called 'apple green'.)
The apple is green.
This is correct when you are referring to a specific apple, the apple you are talking about. The is a definite article; it refers to a particular.
A man and a woman were walking in Oxford Street. The woman saw a dress that she liked in a shop. She asked the man if he could buy the dress for her. He said: "Do you think the shop will accept a cheque? I don't have a credit card."
I have seen in many places, in many articles on the web as well as in print, the practice of including punctuation inside the quotes, when the punctuation is not related to the quoted content, as follows:
"We have begun development," the spokesperson told the media.
Although his response was, "We have begun development," he could not
share any further details at this time.
The comma at the end quote is not related to the quoted content but it is included in the quotes. Why is that?
Shouldn't the following be correct, with the comma outside the end quote?
"We have begun development", the spokesperson told the media.
Although his response was, "We have begun development", he could not
share any further details at this time.
The next example is about the full stop at the end. This is included inside the quotes.
"We have begun development, " the spokesperson said, "but I cannot
give you any further details at this time."
Here there are two functions to accomplish, marking the end of the quoted content as well as the end of the sentence, but only one full stop is used.
Does the full stop, in this case, mark the end of the quoted content, the end of the sentence or both of them?
Is the following correct, marking both with different full stops?
"We have begun development, " the spokesperson said, "but I cannot
give you any further details at this time.".
I'm just wondering what it is about this construction that makes it sound "incorrect" even though technically it is grammatically correct. Is it an awkwardness arising from a lack of cadence, or rhythm of the sentence? Is it a case of rhetorical anaphora* just evolving to be more popular rather than rhetorical repetition? I'm wondering if the popularization of this construct is more due to chance than to any underlying logic.
*anaphora (OED): Grammar ~ The use of a word referring to or replacing a word used earlier in a sentence, to avoid repetition, such as do in I like it and so do they.
Google Ngrams: " * as you are ADJECTIVE "
Google Ngrams: " * as you're ADJECTIVE " (no results)
Answer
It's because the "as ... as" construction has a deleted part which follows "are", words preceding deleted constituents must bear stress, and stressed words cannot be contracted.
"You're as (to an extent) wise, as you are (to that extent) well-traveled" has the elision of "to that extent". This causes "are" to be stressed and prevents it being contracted to "'re" by deletion of the stressed vowel.
Most of the time one or the other feels better, but every so often, "which" vs. "what" trips me up.
So, what's the exact difference and when should you use one or the other?
Answer
"Which" is more formal when asking a question that requires a choice between a number of items. You can use "What" if you want, though.
Generally speaking, you can replace the usage of "which" with "what" and be OK grammatically. It doesn't always work the other way around, however. There needs to be a context of choice. For example:
Which/What flavor of ice cream do you want?
- Either is fine, but "which" is better.
Which/What do you want for dessert?
- "Which" only works in the context of being presented with choices (e.g. a dessert cart right in front of you).
This is the same grammatical issue raised in another thread, except the examples there were not ideal, so the syntactic problem was side-stepped in favor of the semantic one.
Consider this example instead. A man has a car. His wife has a car. Together, they have two cars. He says:
Sounds perfectly natural, right? Unambiguous, even. Yet the mismatch between "We" and "car" is weird when you think about it, at least to me.
Luckily in this case, there are ready alternatives:
"We each have a car."
"We both have our own cars."
Both sound vastly superior to me.
Sometimes, however, there are no obvious alternatives. Take, for example, the opening of the song Different Drum (delightfully sung by Linda Ronstadt, by the way):
You and I travel to the beat of a different drum.
Well, actually, I suppose you could say:
You and I travel to the beats of our different drums.
But there have been cases where I couldn't readily apply my fixes. I just can't think of them at the moment.
My requests for you:
Thank you.
I'm confused with below sentence,
1)She mentioned that it has been named as the Indian Wars.
2)She mentioned that it was named as the Indian Wars.
First one is incorrect?
I am confused as to when commas are supposed to be used before the conjunction and.
This question answers it but I am still a bit confused.
For instance the following two sentences:
- I am going to buy apples, oranges, and bananas at the store.
- I am going to buy apples, oranges and bananas at the store.
Which of the above sentences is the correct usage of a comma?
Answer
Such use of a comma is often called a "serial comma" or an "Oxford comma".
It is typically a matter of style, at least where there is no ambiguity. For example, with or without the comma, your example statement
I am going to buy apples, oranges[,] and bananas at the store.
is not ambiguous. Omission/inclusion of the comma is optional. (According to Wikipedia, use of the Oxford comma is more popular in American English than British English.)
In certain situations the serial comma can resolve some ambiguity. In these cases it should be used:
I am going to buy soup, broccoli[,] and asparagus.
- My dog is so lazy. It can't do anything except eating food.
- My dog is so lazy. It can't do anything except eat food.
Which one is right?
We asked this question in two different forums but we received different answers. Some said #1 is correct and some said #2 is correct. Look at their responses:
A selection of answers taken from WordReference
- No. Except or but is followed by the bare infinitive here @e2efour
- The clue is in the first part of the sentence:
The structure is "they could not except .
I suppose, in full, it would be They couldn't do anything except they could blame others. @PaulQ
- Q70. He is not interested in doing anything except watching movies
You see now? Here, "ing" is used instead of bare infinitive. I think it's because of the word "doing"
Am I right? (The OP @xiaoen)
- If you say watch, it could mean that he avoids watching movies at all costs.
If you say watching, it means that he is only interested in watching movies. @e2efour
However, in the The Free Dictionary Language Forums > English Grammar, someone else offered the following explanation.
- 'Except' is a preposition.
My dog is so lazy. It can't do anything except eating food
@Víctor Lplz
Now we are confused. Which one is correct, and why?
Thank you.
Which of the following is correct:
- (This is a "test").
- (This is a "test.")
- (This is a "test".)
How can I use a dash to correctly connect two and thoughts in a sentence? Is the following sentence correct with the dash in from or should I remove it?
An S database allows access from – and can be opened by multiple applications at the same time.
I am not familiar with the English grammar jargon and don't know how to properly call what I am attempting to do with that dash.
Although I still want to learn about the dash, would the following alternative sentence be correct?
An S database allows access from, and can be opened by, multiple applications at the same time.
Answer
Your second example is the correct way to express the concepts in your sentences using commas.
The use of dashes would not be appropriate in these circumstances. You mention joining and thoughts. The connection of equally weighted concepts is not usually joined with dashes, and if punctuation is needed, it is usually commas or semicolons.
Dashes are usually used within a sentence to indicate a side thought, often called a parenthetical phrase, because it could also be put inside of parentheses. An example would be
An S database - the most versatile of storage systems - allows access from,and can be opened by, multiple applications at the same time.
The commas are needed in your sentence because the verb phrases allows access from and can be opened by use different prepositions. If there were no prepositions, you could use and without the commas, such as
An S database can access and open multiple applications at the same time
It is a translation question and the right answer is
The women gives cookies to the kid.
I put an extra "the" before cookies and it is marked as a wrong answer. Would anyone care to give a detailed reason as to when to put article?
Unrelated side note: I can't believe after so many years studying English, I am still struggling with these basic questions..
While writing an email on behalf of 2 other people.
Should I write.. Savin, Steve and Myself
Or
Myself, Savin and Steve.. ?
I remember reading somewhere it is always, first person, second and third.. My doubt is with the order and not in the usaage of 'Myself' or 'Me'
Thanks.
Consider the sentence:
He offered to be an HSC.
vs:
He offered to be a HSC.
In the example above, HSC stands for Health Service Consultant. If one were saying the sentence aloud, one would say an HSC because an obviously proceeds the spoken letter H, but the H actually represents the word Health, at which point the sentence should perhaps read a HSC because one would obviously say a Health Service Consultant. If one considers what the letter H actually stands for, in a strange way, both versions could perhaps appear to be incorrect depending on whether the acronym is viewed by the reader solely as a contraction or as its real meaning.
I would surmise that an HSC would be the more correct grammar, but I'd like opinion.
There are compound adjectives in which each word is inflected (as adjective). When they are nominalised, should each adjective be separately nominalised or only the ultimate word?
The concrete question I have in mind is the following:
In mathematics, (mathematical objects called) topological spaces are said to be 'simply connected' under certain circumstances. What should the name of the corresponding property be?
'Simple-connectedness' or 'simply connectedness'?
Should there be a hyphen in the second case? (The rules for hyphens in the adjective form are clear.)
Which is the grammatically correct usage?
Answer
In "simply connected", the word "simply" is not an inflected adjective, but an adverb modifying an adjective. In "simple connectedness", the word "simple" is an adjective modifying a noun. No hyphen is needed.
"Simply connectedness" is, therefore, ungrammatical.
The word "simple" serves as a modifier for myriad different mathematical concepts.
When we refer to a house that belongs to a family, we say "family's house". Pluralizing family gives us "families". Referring to the houses of several families, we say "families' houses". Forming the plural possessive in such a case is rather simple.
I encountered a more complex use of this recently - referring to a single house owned by a single family in a set of houses owned by a set of families.
We can say "the families' houses" to refer to all of the houses owned by all of the families.
We can say "one of the families' houses" to refer to one of the houses owned by one or more of the families. In this context, "one of" applies to "the families' houses".
If we were instead to apply "one of" to "the families", and want to refer to the one house owned by "one of the families", how would this be written?
My first though was "one of the families's house", taking "one of the families" as a single noun and appending 's to it. This looks (and sounds) a bit strange, though. "One of the families' house" and "one of the family's house"/"one of the family's houses" seem wrong to me, and I can't really determine the correct way to say/write this.
Is there a definitively correct way that this should be written?
EDIT: To clarify, although I think I made it clear, in this context, there are several families, and each owns one house. The goal of the sentence is to refer to one of those houses without stating which specific house. Example: "The players and their families want to celebrate their team's victory; this will likely entail a party at one of the families's house".
Answer
The construct you suggest is rather awkward as you said yourself. The best way to talk about the specific house is to rephrase the sentence and say instead: "...this will probably entail a party at the house of one of the families."
I was interested in the line “...most Americans use the word 'gay' now instead of 'homosexual'” in Maureen Dowd’s article titled “Happily Never After?” in today’s (April 2) New York Times:
I’m worried about how the justices can properly debate same-sex
marriage when some don’t even seem to realize that most Americans
use the word "gay" now instead of "homosexual"; when Chief Justice
John Roberts thinks gays are merely concerned with marriage as a
desirable "label," and when Justice Samuel Alito compares gay marriage
to cellphones.
When you say “instead of,” it gives me an impression that they are different things, for examples, “I use margarine instead of butter,” “They use acrylic panels instead of plate glass for windows” and "The new car uses aluminum instead of steel plate for the body."
However, when I checked Oxford English Dictionary, it renders “gay” as:
a.1 (of a person, especially a man) homosexual.
- relating to or used by homosexuals:
n. a homosexual, especially a man.
Also OALD defines Gay as:
a. (of people, especially men) sexually attracted to people of the
same sex. [Syn.] HOMOSEXUAL
Aren’t “gay” and “homosexual” the same thing except “gay” being applied to men?
What’s the difference between “gay” and “homosexual” other than gender attributes?
Answer
Both gay and homosexual can be used for both sexes, and they mean mostly the same thing; the differences are subtle.
Probably because the word lesbian exists as well, one is slightly more likely to refer to men when using the word gay; but note that it is very often also used for women. When used as a noun, gay seems to refer to men a bit more often than as an adjective, although it is still very often used to refer to both men and women. It rather depends on context. The word homosexual seems to be completely gender-neutral.
Gay is more informal: homosexual is more formal, and so it is more likely to be used in e.g. medicine and biology. As a consequence, using homosexual can sometimes sound a little bit as if you were describing patients, as if it were some mental illness. This effect is not very strong or ubiquitous, but it is sometimes there. It is stronger when used as a noun (an homosexual, homosexuals). Note that gay is currently in the process of being used more in formal contexts too.
The word homosexual is older. Because homosexuality was long treated as a disease or at least as undesirable, some of this old negativity still clings to the word homosexual, especially as a noun. It is as if you were referring to the past, although this effect, too, is not that strong.
I think this is also the reason why the word gay came to be used (around the 1960s? earlier?) to refer to homosexuals: they wanted a more positive-sounding word. You will find that most gays will mainly use gay, except in a scientific context; and even there, homosexual as a noun has become almost impossible. If you were to say homosexuals, and you weren't over 50 or a bit reactionary in general, I would think you were joking.
I stumbled upon a sentence in something Christopher Hitchens wrote eons ago. But I am iffy about its grammaticality.
And many murderers have been reprieved because they were condemned for the wrong murder, quite probably just as many as have been executed for the only murder they did not in fact commit.
I am not sure the use of "as many as" here makes the sentence grammatical, because there isn't a pronoun or noun phrase following the phrase, which seems to be an ellipsis. I thought I'd write the sentence as:
And many murderers have been reprieved because they were condemned for the wrong murder ; quite probably just as many have been executed for the only murder they did not in fact commit.
or
And many murderers have been reprieved because they were condemned for the wrong murder, quite probably just as many as those that have been executed for the only murder they did not in fact commit.
Am I wrong?
Mentioning a book to an individual to include in their list as classic was met with...
I wouldn't call "Book Name" a classic - it's less than 11 years
old.
This got me thinking about when a book or other item (car, slang, recipe, etc...) becomes a classic. In my initial investigation I stumbled upon this description...
A novel can be called a classic when there is a significant time
period between its publishing and the current age we are in. In other
words, it has to be old, as well as critically renowned as a good
novel. Then, it can be called a classic.
While the above may help define what constitutes a classic, it doesn't define the amount of time that needs to pass before that criteria is met.
Does the designation classic truly imply that a significant amount of time has passed since the work's creation, and if so, how long must that period be to qualify as "significant"?
What's the difference between "rock" and "stone"?
Answer
A rock is bigger, possibly immovable, you couldn't throw it with one hand, at a pinch you might be able to with two.
Above, a Google Image result for "Rock", below, for "Stone"
Note that a boulder is probably bigger than a rock1.
Below, a boulder
Oh, also note that rocks and boulders are made from stone.
(This answer is mildly tongue in cheek)
1 Notable exception: Uluru/Ayre's Rock.
Given the following sentences, what is the difference between the conditional clauses in them?
- If you saw a lion in a thick forest, what would you do?
- If you were to see a lion in a thick forest, what would you do?
I'm asking this simple thing because it's confusing me, since there is no such thing in my native language (it's quite different from English).
I can understand this one (it may be a different question):
If you had seen a lion in a thick forest, what would have you done?
but it's a bit confusing me. In my native language, it's always formulated as follows:
If you would have seen a lion in a thick forest, what would have you done?
Does this make any difference in English?
Answer
There is no difference in meaning between your first two examples. However, the construction with were to see is more formal and slightly antiquated.
However, there is a difference between your second two examples, namely that this one is not grammatically correct:
*If you would have seen a lion in a thick forest, what would have you done?
In English we don't use the modal verb would in the if-clause of a condition of this sort. This condition must be phrased as in your other example:
If you had seen a lion in a thick forest, what would have you done?
Who do you want to talk to?
Whom do you want to talk to?
Which one is correct sentence?
If I was to sum up my computer knowledge in one word, it would be “destitute”.
If I were to sum up my computer knowledge in one word, it would be “destitute”.
Which is correct?
Sometimes I wish to know what each person in a group of people did, or where each person went, or which book goes where. Is it correct to say,
- Who went where?
- Who did what?
- Who told whom?
- Which book goes where?
If not, what is the grammatical way of framing such questions?
Answer
All four are grammatically correct.
The comments are good here, but I wish people would put answers in the answers section because the question remains unanswered even though the OP has the answer(s) in the comments!
How to Construct an Unambiguous Joint Possessive that Follows a Verb?
I've read that when writing about multiple possessors who jointly posses a thing, the common practice is to add a Saxon-genitive ('s) to the last noun in the series. (E.g., John and Mary's cats refers to cats owned by both John and Mary.) Whereas, when writing about multiple possessors who individually possess separate things, the common practice is to add a Saxon-genitive to all the nouns in the series. (E.g., John's and Mary's cats refers to two sets of cats: John owns one of the sets, and Mary owns the other set.)
However, joint possessives can be ambiguous when they are placed immediately after a verb.
For instance, I sang to John and Mary's daughter, could mean 'I sang to a guy named John and I sang to this girl who said she was the daughter of a woman named Mary', or 'I sang to a female who calls her father John, and calls her mother Mary'.
Is there a solution to this problem that's recommended by grammarians or linguists?
Thank you
Please don't answer with a recommendation that the construction be avoided. Whether in life or in language, I don't believe that it's helpful to tell a person that they will not be faced with a problem if they stop trying to solve it. Solving a problem (especially a novel one) does more than solve the problem at hand: Solving a problem helps the problem-solver become better at solving problems.
Answer
I sang to John and Mary's daughter.
This is ordinarily understood to express your 'I sang to a female who calls her father John, and calls her mother Mary'. John and Mary is a single conjunctive expression standing in a genitive relationship to daughter.
If you want to distinguish this from 'I sang to a guy named John and I sang to this girl who said she was the daughter of a woman named Mary' you must explicitly divorce John from conjunction with Mary. This is most efficiently accomplished thus:
I sang to John and to Mary's daughter.
If x said to someone
I want to get a diagnosis for Parkinson's
Does that imply that x already believes they have Parkinson's and want confirmation, or does it just imply that x wants a result no matter whether it is positive or negative?
Until a few months ago, I had always thought that sentences like this were correct:
They always hated me being an atheist.
Only later to find out that the correct form is:
They always hated my being an atheist.
I came to understand the reason behind this and started using the proper form, but as I've seen the latest futurama episode, I found out the problem is far from over. The main cast character, Fry, said the following:
Never bet against me being stupid.
And now I'm totally lost. I've tried googling for an answer and all I found (by @Cerberus here or by others here, here, here and here) seems to disprove the fact of "me being" being correct.
So I ask: did the creators of futurama make such a horrible mistake, or does this problem go deeper than meets the eye?
Is this sentence correct punctuationally:
Anyone who has tried it at least once, knows that...
Also, I googled it to find exact matches, but got only 4 results.
Here's the context:
So, how to convey this idea properly, with correct grammar and punctuation?
Answer
There are a couple of things at play here: people like to put commas in where one would pause in a sentence, but that is not the reason to put in a comma.
The other thing going on, more to your point, is identifying the parenthetical part of the sentence. If we look at it that way, we can see different ways to punctuate it. "Parentheticals" are expressions that can be removed from the sentence, yet the rest of the sentence still makes sense. (In my teaching, I call them "oh, by the way" phrases. In theater, they might be thought of as audience asides.)
"Anyone who has tried it at least once, knows that...."
Is the basic sentence "Anyone knows that..."? Then the parenthetical part is "who has tried it at least once." I don't think this is right, because the original sentence then implies that those who have not tried it at all would still know whatever it is. If it were true, however, the sentence would be written this way:
Anyone, who has tried it at least once, knows that....
Is the basic sentence "Anyone who has tried it knows that..."? Then the parenthetical would be "at least once." The sentence would be written this way:
Anyone who has tried it, at least once, knows that....
This could make sense. In this case, the compound subject would be "anyone who has tried it."
Another choice would be if we are saying specifically that the compound subject is "anyone who has tried it at least once." In this case there would be no comma at all. You don't put a comma between a noun and its verb, a subject and its predicate (except for "oh, by the way" expressions) even if the subject is wordy. In this case, the sentence would be written like this:
Anyone who has tried it at least once knows that punctuating a sentence isn't easy.
A final thought: do you really need the "at least once"? In our speaking, we tend to repeat things that are self-explanatory. (Such things are called "pleonasms," if you're into obscure words.) For example, someone on a television show I'm watching just said something was a "shocking surprise." She could have just said it was a shock. If it's a shock, it probably was surprising. In writing, we try to be more succinct. If you've tried something, you tried it at least once (the first time).
I had a spat with a coworker. We are compiling a software feature list.
One of the entries was the "Employee Profile". However, we wanted to write it down in plural. So, which one should it be?
1 - Employee Profiles
2 - Employees Profiles
3 - Employees' Profiles
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the following:
1 - Correct
2 - Incorrect
3 - Works, too
Answer
1 and 3 in this instance would be correct.
1) 'Employee Profile' is a complete noun phrase with 'employee' - in this instance - not a noun in its own right but a 'noun adjunct'. It is playing the part of a modifier for the subject noun 'Profile' and it is only this word that would take the plural.
3) Also correct but for a different reason. Here they are two separate nouns. 'Employee' in this instance is taking a possessive which splits the complete noun phrase seen in choice 1. So for proper agreement both would need to be conjugated to the plural.
What is the correct spelling and grammar for the following sentence?
These are known as the three "V's": veracity, voraciousness and
vivacity.
In particular, should the "V" be capitalized, should it have an apostrophe, should there be quotes around V's and are there any other mistakes in the sentence?
Answer
For some reason I can't get this graph to display the apostophized r's and R's here, but if you click on this chart to follow the link (where you also have to click "Search books" on that page)...
...you'll see that the capitalised versions have always been more common, but over recent decades the apostophized version the three R's has gained currency to the point where it's (just) become the most common format.
I see no reason why OP's three V's should be any different. Personally I'd never enclose the whole thing in double quotes - it doesn't add anything to the meaning, and it's positively undesirable in terms of legibility.
reading passage:
Ten Taiwanese film directors, producers and screenwriters have been invited to participate in a two-day workshop in Paris next week, to seek co-production opportunities with their counterparts in France.
A total of five Taiwanese film projects have been selected to join the workshop, which will take place at CNC from Jan. 15-16.
My questions:
Why was the present perfect tense used? Why not just the past simple tense?
What does the present perfect imply? Does it imply the state of something already being done?
Thank you very much!
Answer
The simple past tense (when referring to the past) means the action takes place in the past, and that this necessarily excludes the present. It is over before the moment of speaking. "I read your question 2 minutes ago." With the simple past, I am not connecting the past event of my reading to the moment of me writing that sentence.
The present perfect refers to an event or action that took place sometime in the past (before the time of speaking) that has psychological relevance at the time of speaking. It connects the past event to the present. The event or action may or may not still be happening at the moment of speaking. This largely depends on the verb.
I have read you question, and now I am going to answer it. To my mind, my reading of your question still has psychological relevance to me at the moment of writing that sentence.
The question is always: Why use the present perfect instead of the simple past?
The action of the present perfect tense verb may extend all the way to the moment of speaking:
I've studied these instructions for 2 hours and I still don't understand how to program this DVD player. I quit.
I've stood in line for three hours and I haven't received any help.
It can refer to a past action that has some relevance to the speaker at the moment of speaking:
I've finished my homework. Now can I go out and play?
I haven't seen John today (and its important to me that I see him because he owes me $100).
I've been to London, it was a glorious experience.
If there is no continuing relevance, just use the simple past:
I finished my homework.
I didn't see John today.
I went to London and came back.
The present perfect can refer to repeated or habitual past activities that have relevance at the moment of speaking:
I've tried six times to meet the mayor and I'm trying again today.
I've taught English for ten years. (And I'm still teaching it.)
Now consider:
Ten Taiwanese film directors, producers and screenwriters have been invited to participate in a two-day workshop in Paris next week,
The present perfect means the past action has relevance at the moment of speaking. Here, one could have used the past tense: were invited in the same clause. The past tense just reports on a past event. It does not indicate continuing relevance.
A total of five Taiwanese film projects have been selected to join the workshop, which will take place at CNC from Jan. 15-16.
Again the simple past could have been used in this same clause: was selected.
Both verbs have been selected and have been invited are in the present perfect passive. With actions such as select and invite the action is over when the speaker says the sentence, but the action has continuing relevance.
What that relevance is is not always easy to define. As I said, both actions could have been reported with the simple past.
In British English, the present perfect tense is used more often than in American English. This suggests that speakers of British see continuing relevance more often, at least in certain contexts. See these three resources that discuss this: a blog post written by a linguist, the Cambridge Dictionary, the TOEFL website.
If a kid is coming to the table to eat supper, in AmE it can be usual to state:
Did you wash your hands? (simple past)
In BrE, so I have read, it would almost always be
Have you washed your hands?
(The relevance obviously is ascertaining if that the kid is prepared to eat supper.)
So, "Ten film directors have been invited..." it really is the speaker or writer who sees the past action (invite) as having continuing relevance at the moment of writing.
And, "five projects have been selected..." works the same way.
The relevance may simply be to state that although they were invited / selected in the past, this is still true at the moment of speaking.
It does not necessarily have to do anything with the future; I have shown that, in American English, at least, the simple past could have easily been used in those same two sentences.
However, just like the kid having washed his hands, so he is now 'eligible' to eat..so the directors have been invited and they are now 'eligible' to attend. (They may, after all, decline the invitation.)
This is why I said the question is always why choose the present perfect instead of the simple past? Sometimes only the speaker knows, or sometimes it is just because that is the normal way to express the situation (British English).
Edit: Having seen the comment by John Lawler, I see that the present perfect is used to report "hot" or "fresh" news. A reason to do this is to imply that the news has some continuing relevance to the listener.
Have you read the news? It's "vitally important" that you do so
Did you read the news? does not have this same implication.
A few weeks ago I posted a question about the usage of a verbal in a particular sentence. But now, I have another question on the same topic, gerund.
Sometimes I don't know for sure if I need to use the gerund or the infinitive form, so I searched on web to find the answers for my questions; I found this. In this article I found a list of common verbs followed by gerunds and another list of common verbs followed by infinitives.
So, I was wondering if the words that compound one list has some characteristic in common that determine if the following word will be a gerund or an infinitive.
From the referenced PDF file:
Both gerunds and infinitives can replace a noun as the object of a verb. Whether you use a gerund or an infinitive depends on the main verb in the sentence. Consult the lists below to find out which form to use following which verbs.
I expect to have the report done by Friday. [INFINITIVE]
I anticipate having the report done by Friday. [GERUND]
(note that phrasal verbs, marked here with *, always fall into this category):
Answer
Here is a long article that goes over a great deal of the use of gerunds vs infinitives and Wikipedia has some information as well. In short, it is not a simple answer, but there are rules to follow, and many instances where both work fine, but the meaning can change depending on which you use. In reference to the list you supplied, verbs of communication (acknowledge, admit, accuse, advise) tend to take the gerund (but not always - advise for example - advised against entering vs advised not to enter). Some just take an infinitive for no real reason other than there had to be a rule to govern them (arrange, afford, appear, agree). Some verbs can take either (love, prefer, like) but the meaning changes drastically (I love boxing vs I love to box).
As title, which one is more correct between:
Or maybe both are grammatically correct, are just different in what they mean.?
Answer
Before some certain people come in claiming that one is valid and one isn't,
I'd like to say that both are grammatically correct, but the second example is less common and more general in meaning.
[It seems] this month [I'm getting better] [at something].
Arguably this month is a "replacement" for that, and more specific in meaning.
[It seems that I'm getting better at something]
To outside viewers i'm improving my own capabilities of doing something, actively participating.
[It seems that I get better at something]
Almost the same initially, but can lack the active participation, as in, someone "suffers" getting better at something. Or in a broader view, someone receives something that is called better, somewhere(at something).
Without more context:
They do mean the same thing, and both are grammatically correct.