adjectives - Indefinite articles used with plural nouns: It was AN amazing TWO DAYS

The indefinite article a(n), derives from the old English word an meaning "one". Generally this word only occurs in determiner function before noun phrases which are singular. However, there seem to be some cases where this determiner occurs before plural noun phrases. I say that, but actually these noun phrase seem so bizarre to me, in terms of their structure, that I'm not sure they're definitely noun phrases at all. Here are some examples:

• a full three months before we left


• an amazing two days


• an awkward ten minutes

Ignoring the article here for a moment, these noun phrases are odd because the adjective is occurring before the numeral. We would normally expect to see:

• three full months


• two amazing days


• ten awkward minutes

Even given the oddness of the word order in the original phrases, I can see no reason why the normally singular indefinite article is licensed here.

Can anybody give an account of the syntactic structure of these phrases, and/or explain why the semantically singular article is able to be used with such phrases - even if they compulsorily trigger plural verb agreement?

Here is an example of one of these instances which seems to demand a plural verb:

1. An amazing two million people attend every year.


2. *An amazing two million people attends every year. (ungrammatical)

Answer

A few old grammar rules

A great many, a good many, a few.—These are very incorrect and bad
phrazes; and the singular article can never be properly used with a
plural noun.

Since Few words on Many Subjects was published in 1831, English has seen quite a few changes. I don't know whether this rule was enforced at schools, but I did find another example lambasting the use of the indefinite article before many in front of a plural noun.

There is an extensive and growing error in the use of the adjectives good and many. It is not correct to say “a good many apples,” tho we may say “many good apples;” for, omitting the adjective good, we can not say “a many apples.” Neither is it correct to say “a great many persons;” for, “a great persons,” or “a many persons,” would be improper. It would be better to say, many apples; many persons, and omit the good and great. We do not hear of “a bad many,” or a “small many.” Why then say “a good or great many?” “The rushing of many waters;” “the influence of many minds,” are much more expressive than to add the words great and good.

^{Source: A grammar of the English language: Explained According to the Principles of Truth and Common Sense ... (1839)}

a/an + adjective + number + plural noun

The fact that native speakers were using the article "a" in front of adjectives and plural nouns in the 19th century, proves there is nothing new under the sun. Today the following sentences are perfectly grammatical.

1. He weighed a whopping twenty-five stones (350 lbs)


2. We spent a wonderful/fantastic/memorable three weeks in Greece


3. He had collected a good many books


4. She waited a full three minutes before speaking


5. It had been an exciting two years for Alice


6. Ted had an exhausting two days in Denver.


7. It costs a mere twenty dollars.

In sentence 3, “a great number of” could substitute “a good many”.

(a) He weighed twenty-five stones.
(b) We spent three weeks in Greece.
(c) He had collected many books.
(d) She waited three minutes before speaking
(e) Alice had experienced two exciting years.
(f) Ted had two exhausting days.
(g) It (only) costs twenty dollars

The sentences are only grammatical without the "a" and its "adjective"; take away only one of the two components, and the sentences become ungrammatical. The indefinite article modifies the adjective with the number. There has to be a number attached to the adjective in order for the sentence to be grammatical.

“She waited a full minutes before speaking” (NO)
“She waited a three minutes before speaking.” (NO)
“She waited a minutes before speaking” (NO)

The noun phrases take a plural noun and a plural verb after the singular a great /good many; or a/an + adjective + number; e.g.

A great many people in this country are worried about law-and-order
An astronomical 300,000 tons of apples were destroyed.
… an amazing 250,000 new neurones are added every minute.

In a great (or) good many people, “great” and “good” act like the adverb very, or really, they intensify the adjective many; i.e. “very many people” and “really a lot of people”.

The determiner many and a good many are listed in all the dictionaries I checked, but they offer no insights as to why this construction is acceptable.

many n. (used with a pl. verb)
1. The majority of the people; the masses: "The many fail, the one succeeds" (Tennyson).
2. A large indefinite number: A good many of the workers had the flu.
^{American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language}

man•y
3. a large or considerable number of persons or things: A good many of the beggars were blind.
^{Random House Kernerman Webster's College Dictionary, © 2010}

Rogermue in the comments, suggests that a great many is derived from the German noun Menge a word meaning "multitude".

An article in Language Log has this to say on this particular construction

Funky a

A couple of days ago, I took Roy Peter Clark to task for claiming that phrases like "a million dollars" show that the indefinite article a can be used with a plural head ("Slippery glamour", 7/4/2008). I observed that the structure is clearly [[a million] dollars], not [a [million dollars]]; that expressions like "a million" are just numbers, fitting into the normal syntactic slot where numbers go; and that million in this case is morphosyntactically singular.

In the comments, Russell Lee-Goldman pointed out that
There are, however, a few cases where it really looks like "a" is acting funky:

– He was there for a good seven years.
– An additional three people are required.
– A mere four nations recognize that standard.
– She collected an amazing and heretofore unprecedented forty million dollars.

[..examples taken from the web...]

But these examples seem to me to represent a generalization of the phenomenon on display in phrases like "a million dollars": English number-expressions have inherited from their partitive history a limited ability to act like singular noun phrases.
However, I'll admit that the constituent structure doesn't feel like

[ [a  ] ]

but rather feels like

[ [a ] [ ] ]

— for what little those feelings are worth

The article ends with an update and suggests reading two studies. The paper, A SINGULAR PLURAL, by Tania Ionin & Ora Matushansky, I believe would interest the OP a great deal.

When a phrase ends with a period, do you put ... or .. after it?

I was just reading this question: When "etc." is at the end of a phrase, do you place a period after it?

And it brought to mind something similar. If a phrase ends with a . (such as e.g. or etc.), and you want to use ..., how many periods should you put?

That is, which of these is correct?

something something etc...

something something etc....

To preempt the objection that ellipses never follow abbreviations, they can when used for aposiopesis in dialogue.

Answer

An ellipsis is always 3 dots. A period is always one dot. If you need both an ellipsis and a period, that totals up to 4 dots.

Chicago Manual of Style, 14th Edition, section 10.55:

When the last part of a quoted sentence is omitted and what remains is still grammatically complete, four dots—a period followed by three ellipsis dots—are used to indicate the omission.

Ideally the ellipsis would be set distinctly from the period, using for example the Unicode Horizontal Ellipsis codepoint (U+2026):

…

Although the CMoS indicates "period followed by ellipsis", I believe that sometimes the ellipsis may come before the period, depending on the nature of your sentence.

punctuation - When should I capitalise the first inital after a colon?

I've read a few question and answers on this topic but, to make assurance doubly sure (as it were), here goes.

Is the capitalisation correct in the following two instances?

1. Chapter 7 examines the impact of intra-household inequalities in access to food and addresses questions such as: How do poor agricultural families cope with food insecurity during seasonal troughs in the agricultural production cycle? How do they cope with calamities such as drought and famine? Does the burden of coping fall equally on all family members?




2. This is justified on the grounds that: ‘In the African way, we speak to the man who is the head of the house and assume he will pass on the information to other members’; and again, ‘Being men, it is of course easier for us to persuade men’ (Staudt 1975–76: 91).

In instance (1), had there been only one question, should I have lowercased the initial h?

Chapter 7 examines the impact of intra-household inequalities in access to food and addresses questions such as: how do poor agricultural families cope with food insecurity during seasonal troughs in the agricultural production cycle?

word choice - The correct use of conversely

I think perhaps I'm using the wrong word in this sentence. Is this the correct use of conversely and if not what is the correct word to use and what is the correct use of conversely.

If we decide not to plant a garden then we will not have to find a
place to buy seed, conversely if we can't find a place to buy seed we
won't be able to plant a garden.

In this question: Is the use of "conversely" to mean "on the other hand" correct? the answer mentions the word Obversely which when I look it up seems like perhaps it would be the better word. However as the answer also mentions that word isn't used often. It would sound rather odd in casual conversation.

word choice - 'A' vs 'An' ufotable Production

The company ofutable (pronounced UFO-table) likes to start their movies with a black background, and

An ufotable Production

emblazoned in the middle of the screen.

As a native english speaker, I find this phrase rather jarring. It seems grammatically incorrect.

I'm confident it should be:

A ufotable Production

Why?

grammar - Is the word "that" overused?

Is it wrong or in bad form to constantly use the word "that" when it can be omitted?

1. The test that she took was so difficult that she began to sweat.


2. The test she took was so difficult she began to sweat.

I find myself writing more along the style of 1., but for some reason, I feel like it's not good form. Is there a grammar principle to confirm or refute this intuition?

Answer

Generally, the use of that is optional: neither its use nor its omission are bad style. However, when you are using it everywhere, all the time, that can be too much. The same applies to omitting it everywhere—the more so because its omission can sometimes cause ambiguity.

Of your example sentences, I'd say the first one is OK; I think I'd leave out the first that, but that would be only a minor improvement. Tastes may vary on this. If there had been three thats close together, I'd say it would usually be best to omit one, unless all three were required for clarity; but in that case it might be better to recast or split the sentence.

The second sentence is perhaps acceptable to some, but I'd put a that after difficult. Omitting it twice in a row makes the sentence a bit harder to parse, though it's still not the end of the world. Given the choice, I think one usually omits the that of relative clauses (the chair that I saw) and of reported speech (he said that he'd come) sooner than the that of so ... that, though it is still possible there. I'd write your sentence like this:

The test she took was so difficult
that she began to sweat.

Note that we usually omit that more often in speech; there intonation resolves some of the ambiguity that might otherwise ensue. I'd probably omit both thats in speech.

word choice - "____ and me" versus "____ and I"

Possible Duplicates:
When do I use “I” instead of “me?”
Which is correct, “you and I” or “you and me”?

While reading an article from a certain newspaper this morning on grammar pet peeves, I noticed one that I had never heard of before, concerning the usage of "me" vs. "I." The examples were something like: "The pool amazed my friend and me"; and "My friend and I were amazed by the fireworks." I have never, ever heard of using "____ and me," but the writer of this article believes that when using the passive, it should be "____ and me." Is this correct?

meaning - what does "into the blue" / "to the blue" exactly mean?

What does it mean? And when is it used?

If someone says:
"To the blue", "into the blue"?
What to expect from that?

Answer

It sometimes depends on the context. "The blue" generally refers to, either, the ocean or the sky.

The "wild blue yonder", for example, refers to the sky as it exists as an existential and physical frontier that pushes the limits of human engineering should humans wish to travel to or beyond it.

grammaticality - How should I phrase "Not only but also.."?

I am writing a sentence like so:

"I bought the Dell laptop because not only did I find the price appealing but I also liked the the fact that the laptop had an integrated webcam."

Is my use of ".. not only .. but also ..." appropriate? Is there a better way to phrase such a sentence?

Answer

This sounds better to me:

I bought the Dell laptop not only because I found the price appealing, but also because I liked the fact that the laptop had an integrated webcam.

I just moved the 'not only' up front. This pretty much cascaded to all the other changes: not splitting up "but also," keeping the tenses more consistent ('I found' vs. 'did I find'), etc.

grammar - What evidence is there that 'to' belongs to any particular part of speech?

Reopen note:

There is a quite finite and modest amount of evidence in the literature about this issue, which members can record here as they see fit. Less than there is for example about what a noun is or what a verb is, or how to tell what the Subject of a sentence is. It's a simple question, that people need to be able to get answered on a site such as this. It is of continuing interest as more recent questions such as this attest to. The fact that people disagree about the outcome of the evidence does not mean that there is too much evidence to be documented. Quite the reverse. They disagree because there is relatively little evidence altogether. However, it is seriously interesting evidence.

The question

What part of speech is to as in:

• I need to know.


• To err is human, to forgive divine.


• What am I to do?

This question is not really about the difference in meaning between the examples. It is a question about what grammatical or syntactic reasons we have to classify this item as a particular part of speech. If arguing that it is 'its own part of speech', I'd like to know what grammatical - but not historical - reasons you have for your claim.

Just to clarify, I'm not asking about what assignment any particular authority or publication gives it. I'm interested to know the reasons why. Your own personal insights are also very welcome.

If you're a grammar anorak - like me - then you may want a list of the contenders out there from other grammarians. In no particular order:

• preposition


• subordinator


• non-finite auxiliary verb



• modal verb


• inflectional element

Can you help?

nouns - Suffix ‘-ium’ vs. ‘-um’ in element names

Many chemical elements have the suffix ‘-ium’. However, exactly four elements – molyb­denum, tanta­lum, plat­inum, and lan­thanum – have the suffix ‘-um’ instead.

Is there a difference between the two suffixes? Is there a reason for the different naming choice?

Answer

I haven't found any common factor distinguishing the elements with names ending in -ium from the elements with names ending in another letter followed by -um. It seems fairly arbitrary, and in fact there was some variation historically between forms ending in -ium and -um for tantalum and lanthanum (and there is still variation between aluminium and aluminum in American English).

Most elements are metals. Many of the nonmetals are halogens or noble gases, which have different naming patterns using the suffixes -ine and -on respectively. But the nonmetals helium and selenium, and the metalloids tellurium and germanium have the -ium suffix also. The user J... left a comment saying that helium was originally thought to be a metal; a quote supporting this can be found in Linear Christmas's answer to the related Chemistry SE question Why do the names of most chemical elements end with -um or -ium?. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) entry for selenium says that it and tellurium were "formerly classed among the metals".

Apparently, in Latin the names of metals always had the neuter grammatical gender ( Lectures on Syntax: With Special Reference to Greek, Latin, and Germanic, by Jacob Wackernagel, edited by David Langslow, published 2009). Examples of this are ferrum "iron," aurum "gold," cassiterum "tin" (a loanword from Greek κασσίτερος). Latin neuter nouns of the second declension regularly take the ending -um when singular and in the nominative or accusative case. (Janus Bahs Jacquet has pointed out in a comment that some metal names in Latin belonged to other declensions and so took other endings, such as aes "copper/bronze/brass." But I have the impression that new words formed in scientific Latin are generally in the first or second declension.)

So the -um part of -ium is just this Latin second-declension neuter ending. In Latin, -i- is a common derivational suffix (words formed with the suffix -i- end in -ia/-ius/-ium depending on their gender). Generally, Latin -i- is used to derive adjectives from other nouns (Wiktionary) but in Latin adjectives and nouns can often interchange, so it's often also possible to use words with this suffix as nouns. I haven't found a reference that explains why -i- shows up in so many of these element names; I'd assume it's because as new elements were discovered people named them in honor of existing things and the easiest way to derive a new name like this in Latin is to use -i-. For example, rhodium is apparently named after roses (the Ancient Greek word for "rose" is rhodon). Also, as more and more elements were named this way it became a noticeable pattern that people might follow even if they were not aware of its origins.

The OED doesn't provide an extensive explanation of the origins of the use of -ium, but it mentions the Latin metal names and gives some historical context for the English ones:

the names of sodium, potassium, and magnesium, derived from soda,
potassa or potash, and magnesia, were given by Davy in 1807, with the derivative form -ium; and although some of the later metals have
received names in -um, the general form is in -ium [...].

As I said, I can't see any factor connecting all of molyb­denum, platinum, tanta­lum, and lan­thanum. (The names tanta­lum and lan­thanum were coined more recently than molydenum and lanthanum, so I have re-arranged your list to put them last.)

• Molybdenum, according to Wiktionary, is derived from the Greek name for lead, μόλυβδος molybdos. The OED provides some additional details about how the -en- got in there: it references the earlier word "molybdena", from Latin molybdaena, from ancient Greek μολύβδαινα molybdaina "a kind of lead ore" which according to the OED ends in "-αινα, suffix forming nouns". The rule about metal names having neuter gender in Latin does not seem to apply to the names of ores: there are also words like galena (feminine) "lead-ore; dross", anthrax (masculine) "cinnabar", and (lapis) haematites (masculine) "red iron-ore/hematite" (it also had other meanings, apparently). I don't see any particular reason for why molybdenum was used as the name of the element instead of molybdenium.




• Platinum seems to be from a Spanish word, platina, meaning "little silver." I guess it makes some sense to adapt this by simply changing the ending to -um rather than deriving a new word with -i-. But the process seems fairly arbitrary.





• Tantalum (discovered and named in 1802) is named after Tantalus. I don't see any reason why it isn't tantalium. In fact, Wiktionary lists that as an obsolete spelling, and there is a question that was asked earlier on this site about that variant of the word: Reason why tantalium became obsolete.




• Lanthanum (named sometime around 1840) is named after a Greek word meaning "to go unnoticed." I don't know why it doesn't have the ending -ium; in this case as well, it seems completely arbitrary to me. Wiktionary lists lantanium and lanthanium as obsolete alternative forms, and there is a question about them here: Lanthanum vs lanthanium.

british english - Title of a widow?

I have to book a flight for my grandma who was married and became a widow. She still has to get a new ID but I want to book the flight asap. How do I write her title? Miss, misses, or?

Answer

I think there are two questions here: what is the "proper" title for a widow, and will the airline care?

1. For the first, I'd go with whatever is more comfortable for your grandma (I would guess Mrs. if she was happily married).




2. For the second question, I think that either Miss or Mrs is perfectly acceptable to them. The title is more about how people should address her; unlike her name, it's not a "legal" descriptor.

Reported speech modal verbs could and might

I know that usually we don't change modal verbs in reported speech but i want to know if it is OK to change could for might as it doesn't change the meaning. I failed my English exam on this one question and my teacher says that I can pass if I can prove I'm right.

"I could be very rich when I'm 35." said Tom
Tom told me that he might be very rich when he's 35.

I don't see the problem as it means the same. The rules say that modals don't usually change, but they don't say that they never change.

Help needed urgently

What is the independent clause of dependent clause?

I want to explain my problems with the following sentences:

"Even boldly going where few have gone doesn't always lead to radical

conclusions. Over the years, researchers have set up
weather-monitoring stations in remote areas of Antarctica. According
to data from stations on the Ross Ice Shelf -where almost all
those taking part in Robert Scott's ill-fated South Pole expedition
perished sometime between late February and mid-March of 1912 -
temperatures as low as those recorded in Scott's journal have been
documented only once in the past 15 years."

1) In "where almost all those ......", who does those refer to?

2) That same clause started with where. What place does this dependent clause refer to?

3) What is the independent clause for this dependent clause?

is article "an" before the noun "hour" acceptable?

I have seen many authors uses "an" before "hour" like "an hour" some times. Please consider the below excerpts.

"How long is your break?", I shouted. A group of labourers sat under the banyan tree near the main campus building. "It's two-thirty, lunch ended an hour ago."

and another one is below

I would take his boat for an hour, and buy him tea and biscuits in return.

one more

' I won't take more than half an hour' I promised.

I learned from my teachers that the article "an" comes before vowels and not before consonants. Here "H" is consonant, still author uses the article "an" before "hour".

My question is, is this "an" before "hour" is acceptable? If yes can you explain why?

grammaticality - Why is "union" an exception to the "a/an" rule?

Usually when a word starts with a vowel, we will use "an" before it. But for union, it is "a union" not "an union." It is not explained in the previously mentioned a vs an why union is an exception. It explains how to know exceptions for h like hotels.

Also are there any exceptions for the opposite side, where there should be an "a" but is an "an" instead? (Unfortunately I have no example of a case like this.)

Answer

The a/an-rule is based on pronunciation, not on spelling. Though the word union is spelt beginning with a vowel, the u is pronounced "you":

/ˈjuː.ni.ən/

So, this is why it is accompanied by a rather than an and this is also the case for many other words starting with a vowel, have a look at these:

• a user


• a European

but:

• an ultimatum


• an orange

Note that there are words which start with an h and when that h is not pronounced, these words also go with an:

an honor

However, if this h is pronounced, then the article used is a:

• a hill


• a heathen

Here's a short but clear article that explains the usage of a/an: Articles: A versus An

punctuation - How to punctuate a quoted question within a question?

How would I punctuate the bold portion?

"Who are you?" she asked.

"Wait," I replied, "did you just ask me Who are you?"

I would use the following:

"Wait," I replied, "did you just ask me, 'Who are you'?"

• Comma before the quote




• Quoted with single quotation marks (instead of italics, which I'd consider another option)




• Closing quotation mark before the question mark




• Only one question mark (for my question, not the quoted one)

Is this correct?

Answer

Here's the correct version:

"Wait," I replied, "did you just ask me, 'Who are you?' "

Some things to notice:
1. The statement being quoted is a question, so you need the question mark in the embedded quotation marks. You don't need a second question mark. A sentence can have only one end punctuation mark.
2. The comma before the embedded quotation, which follows standard format for introducing a quotation.
3. The space between the single and double quotation marks at the end.

If I were to revise this, I would write this:
"Wait," I said. "Did you just ask me who I am?"

Definite article with the names of trains

I've heard and seen train names that consist of common nouns take a definite article (eg: the Orient Express, the Sabarmati Express, etc., according to Wikipedia.).

I don't know if it's the same case with train names,

1) That consist of a proper noun or the place name they travel from/to (eg: Rawal Express, Pakistan Express, etc.).

2) That consist of more than 1 proper noun or the names of the places of both the origin and the destination (eg: Visakhapatnam - Secunderabad Duronto Express, etc.).

syntax - Ending sentence with two nouns?

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.

signage - Should this sign have the preposition at the end?

I created the following sign for my computer:

"Please do not turn off this computer."

My office mate told me that this should be the correct way to do it:

"Do not turn this computer off."

He said that the preposition should be at the end.
Is he correct?

word usage - 'Potential' as an adjective

Here is one of those things that I have simply never thought about until recently.

I have a friend who speaks English as a second language and so still has a few overhanging errors in his speech; One of these is to use 'potential' as follows:

He is very potential.

When I corrected this for him, I told him that in that case we would use potential as a noun, "he has a lot of potential", for example.

However, confusion then ensued as we both know that potential is also an adjective, but as far as I am aware, can only be used as a pre-modifier: potential client, potential success, etc.

Is this a unique case? Is there a reason for it?

or

Am I wrong?

Answer

It seems that 'Potential' is one of a small group of adjectives that can in fact only be attributive (part of a noun phrase). Turns out, the dictionary does indicate this:

http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/potential

Other examples are : maximum, outright, total (in one sense), utter...

How do you answer tag questions with ", right?"?

When you asked "You don't love me, right?":
Which word is used to answer, "Right." or "Yes."?

If the answer is "Right":

--> Does "Right" mean "What you said is right, i.e., I don't love you.", doesn't it?

If the answer is "Yes":

--> Which does "Yes" mean, "Yes, what you said is right." or "Yes, I love you."?

modal verbs - Use of 'must have' for obligation in the future

I have noticed there is a way of using 'must have' to denote finished obligation in the future - somewhat akin to the 'future perfect tense'. An example of what I mean:

" I must have finished this exercise by tomorrow"

To me, "I must finish this exercise by tomorrow" would be just sufficient, but the above example is especially confusing because it seems to make perfect sense, and yet it seems to violate a rule of thumb I picked up, which is that 'must have' can only be used to express a deduction or an assumption concerning the past.

eg: "He must have dropped the pen by mistake " meaning 'I believe most certainly he did'.

All the references I checked do not cover this particular use of 'must + past-perfect'. If there were no time signifier - 'by tomorrow' in this example - I would squarely think that this is a statement about the past. So, at the risk of sounding finicky, would a native speaker ever use 'must + present perfect' in this sense?

References:
http://www.englishpage.net/showthread.php?16692-must-have-used-vs-should-have-used
http://www.englishpage.com/modals/must.html

grammaticality - Was I driving more than 5 mph under the speed limit, or less than 5 mph under the speed limit?

Suppose I am driving 38 miles per hour in a 45 zone. This, of course, is seven miles per hour under the speed limit. Of course, I am driving this slowly because the road is wet, and safe driving habits suggest that when the road is wet, one should consider the safe speed limit to be five miles per hour less than the posted limit.

For this situation, which is correct?

• "I am driving more than 5 mph under the posted speed limit"


• "I am driving less than 5 mph under the posted speed limit"

To support the first case: my speed discrepancy from the posted limit is more than 5 mph. TO support the second case: my total speed was less than 45 less 5 (equals 40).

---

Edit: As many pointed out, there are certainly ways to assemble a phrase to remove any ambiguity. But that's not really the point of why I asked. My reason for asking is two-fold:

1. The scenario came to mind when I was driving after a recent snowfall. I was minding my speed, but thought about accident situations. I wondered what would happen if I got in an accident and told the officer, "officer, I was driving more than 5mph under the speed limit." Would that indicate careful or safe driving? Could that phraseology be used against me? Would the insurance company clamp down on that usage of a phrase to deny a claim?


2. More generally, how do comparisons work? There are (at least) two comparisons in either construction: "under the posted speed limit," which unambiguously means "slower than the legal limit," and "more/less than 5 mph." However, in this case, "5 mph" isn't a speed at all; it is a discrepancy. One cannot drive at a speed discrepancy; in fact, the only reason the quantity "5 mph" has units at all is because of the mathematical property that units be additively consistent (i.e. you cannot add 5 mph to 17 bananas). Restructuring the phrase to use a dimensionless quantity also removes ambiguity: "I was driving slower than 89% of the speed limit."

So my question could really be more abstractly framed as: when relatively comparing something to another comparison, does the "relational arrow" point in the direction of the inner-most comparison?

Other examples:

• It is less than 5 degrees below freezing (29 degrees, or 23 degrees?).


• I am more than 5 pounds below my target weight of 180 lbs (177 lbs, or 172 lbs?).

Answer

I think the other answers have missed a key factor in how this would be interpreted. And that's that it's a lot more common to be talking about your speed in relation to the national speed limit than to be talking about your speed in relation to 5mph less than the speed limit.

In other words it is unusual to say that your speed was "less than (national limit - 5)", whereas it's fairly common to quantify how much less than the national speed limit you were.

So I think that

I was driving more than 5 mph under the posted speed limit

is very clear that you mean that's how much you were under the limit by. In fact it took me a little while to find your other meaning at all.

Edit: David Richerby makes another excellent point: if you were indeed saying that your speed was "less than (national limit - 5)" you would say "I was driving at less than (national limit - 5)". Not "I was driving less than (national limit - 5)". Further evidence for the ambiguity being negligable in this instance. Do read his answer.

Should "Ladies" be marked with an apostrophe in the noun phrase "Ladies beer"?

What should it say on a label: Is it "ladies' beer" or "ladies beer?"

Adjectives modifying a list

"The Bank's information department is responsible for the related
system maintenance, obstacle removal and backup process."

Does the adjective "related" modify all three items in the list or only the first item?

Is there room for interpretation?

If I wanted the adjective "related" to modify all three items, without adding "related" in front of all three items lest it feel redundant,

how would I go about it?

Thank you in advance for your insights!

Answer

"The Bank's information department is responsible for the related
system maintenance, obstacle removal and backup process."

I think that most readers would interpret this to mean that all the activities were related to something. However it is not perfectly clear to me what that something is. Does a previous sentence make it clear what they are related to?

In any case, one way to make your intention clearer is as follows:

"The Bank's information department is responsible for the related actions of system maintenance, obstacle removal and backup."

grammaticality - Is it grammatically correct to start a sentence with the word "request", used as a verb?

For example: "Request you to respond as soon as possible."
I've encountered this sentence in a few e-mails (without subject words like "I" or "we").

grammar - What is the rule for using inversion with "as"?

As far as I know, we can use either inversion or normal sentence order with "as" when we are talking about things or people in the "as clause" that are different from those we are mentioning in the independent clause, for example:

"John and Mary brought their kids to the party, as did we all / as we all did."

"I've often wished I could afford to work less, as do most people / as most people do, I suspect."

But we cannot use normal sentence order when--in spite of talking about different things or people in each clause--the clause with "as" is uttered by a second person. So we have to use inversion, right? For example:

Jill: Did you see that John and Mary brought their kids to the party?

Jack: As did we all. What's the point?

Is this rule correct?

By the way, is "as" acting as an adverb of comparison in the above examples?

verb agreement - Why does "there's" work as a contraction for plural items?

While writing recently, I came across a situation where a character said:

There's a lot of chandeliers in here.

When editing, I realized that I wanted to have the sentence sound more formal, and chose to remove the contraction to do so, which is when I realized that it would become:

There are a lot of chandeliers here.

This puzzled me, and puzzles me still. There's is presumably a contraction of "there" and "is", which is, of course, grammatically incorrect when describing a plural. But why is this okay in the contraction?

Answer

Over time, there's has become applicable to both singular and plural nouns. The Cambridge Dictionary explains that this shift has primarily occurred in spoken or informal contexts. If the character were more colloquial or if they did not tend to speak in an especially refined way, they may say that. They risk being called "incorrect" by prescriptivists but in my experience it's never been remarked upon as a spoken error.

However, the use of the contraction does not generalize to

*There is a lot of chandeliers in here.

since the expanded version has not come into use in the same way in standard forms of English.

Why not use there're? I've used it quite a bit in my life, but sources (including a question on that point) point to it being a dialect feature that is less common in standard contexts.

In short, you have three options:

There's a lot of chandeliers in here (informal, more likely spoken)

There are a lot of chandeliers in here (formal, spoken or written)

There're a lot of chandeliers in here (dialect-specific or less common in writing)

grammatical number - Acronyms: Plural, and then Singular

The acronym "SP" is first written in the document as:
"contained in widely used or long-standing special permits (SP)."

Next it appears in the singular:
"eliminate the need for numerous SP renewal requests."

Later it appears again in the plural form as:
"submitted by the regulated community related to certain SPs and..."

Is this the correct usage for all three instances?

Answer

It seems that the author meant for SP to represent "special permit" not "special permits." Given this, the second and third are clearly correct.

As for the first, perhaps it could have been "long-standing special permits (SPs)," but that might imply that the abbreviation always included a lower-case s, similar to PhD, or IPsec.

A better approach might be to rephrase the sentence so that the first abbreviation, denoted in parenthesis, didn't represent a plural form.

grammar - have worked vs had worked

I have worked here for five years.
I had worked here for five years.
I worked here for five years.

Which one is gramatically correct.
Does the first sentence mean that he worked here and is still working?
And the 2nd and 3rd indicate something happened in past. And when to use these. Is there any difference between these two?

negation - Answering a negative question with one word

There has been talk of how to answer a negative question without ambiguity, most often with a qualifying phrase needed for clarification. (For example, "yes, I do"/"no, I don't.)

I've noticed that other languages have a single word to address a negative question on the contrary. In German, ja means yes and nein means no. Alternatively, doch is used to respond in the positive to a negative question, in essence meaning "No, I intend to do the opposite of what your question presumes."

Take for example the question, "You don't want to go to the movie then?" German speakers could simply reply, "nein" if they don't want to go or they would say "doch" if they did want to go; an unambiguously positive response to a negatively phrased question. No need for, "no, I actually would like to go" or "yes, I'll come actually". In French, the respective equivalents of ja, nein, and doch are oui, non, and si. I imagine many other languages contain this set as well.

I am wondering whether there was at one time an equivalent word in the English language that has since (unfortunately) disappeared. Any ideas?

Answer

According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yes_and_no#The_Early_English_four-form_system, 'yes' and 'no' used to be for answering negatively phrased questions. 'Yea' and 'nay' were used for the positive.

pronouns - The all too frequent conundrum involving "who" and "whom"

Sir Reginald Wingate, a British general, is said to have described the Bedouin as “an untrained rabble, most of whom have never fired a rifle.”

Should it not have been "who" instead of "whom" in that sentence fragment?

Google search for "most of who have" returns about 2,70,00,000 results. While a similar search for "most of whom have" returns about About 70,20,000 results. I understand though, from Laurel, that a more reliable approach would be to either consult the Corpus of Contemporary American English or Google Ngram Viewer.

The problem with the sentence fragment is that it does not sound right substituting "who"/"whom" with "he"/"him".

Answer

Instead of using Google search to find frequencies (which is always laughably inaccurate), you can use a tool like the BYU corpora. I used the Corpus of Contemporary American English and searched for most of who* have (where who* matches words that start with "who", including "who" itself). The results are clear: there are 108 hits for "most of whom have" and none for anything else. Google NGrams gives similar results.

For this sentence it sounds at least slightly odd either way to "substitute he and him for who and whom" to figure it out (as moioci suggests). Instead, you can substitute they and them for who and whom (the same method, but with plurals):

...most of they/them have never fired a rifle.

In this sentence, only "them" sounds right.

adjectives - "more" is to "less" as "er" is to what?

Excerpt from Cambridge Dictionary of American English:

If you want to use an adjective or adverb to say that a quality is of
a higher degree, you can usually add -er (one-syllable adjectives) to the end of it or qualify it with more (adjectives of two ore more syllables).

e.g. your hair is longer now than it was last year.

To say that a quality is of a lower degree, you can usually add
-er (one-syllable adjectives) to the end of a negative adjective or adverb, or qualify it with less (adjectives of two ore more syllables).

e.g. your hair is shorter now than it was last year.

My question is: How can we say that a negative & one-syllable adjective is of a higher degree? I mean, if "shorter" somehow means "more short", how can I say that something is "less short"? And if "longer" somehow means "more long", how can I say that something is "less long" than another thing?

A friend of mine suggested that the only way of saying the opposite of "negative adj + er" is to say "positive adj + er". (i.e. shorter -> longer). My take is that whether "adj + er" means "more adj" or "less adj", entirely depends on whether the used adj. is positive or negative respectively. Is my understanding correct? Is it possible to say the opposite of "shorter" to convey the meaning of "less short" without using a different adjective?

Rephrased question:

For non-one-syllable adjectives:

If A is more beautiful than B, then B is less beautiful than

A.

Why is there no such ability in English to bidirectionally compare one-syllable adjectives as well?

If A is rounder than B, then B is (???) than A.

tenses - "I was washing..." vs "I washed..."

I am not a native English speaker, so I would like to ask about the usage of 'was + present participle' and past participle without aux in past form. for example, what's the difference between "I was washing clothes" and "I washed clothes" ? which one is the correct form?

formality - Is “ain’t” slang, or is it colloquial instead?

Does using the word ain’t in a song make it slang, whereas using it in a speech make it colloquial?

Answer

It's colloquial.

From your comments about register, you seem to be talking about affecting a colloquialism.

If a songwriter who would naturally use the word in speaking their own dialect, or if it is written from the perspective of a narrator-character who would use it, then it's still a colloquialism.

Now, if a conservative politician who generally used a very formal register and whose background was such that ain't wouldn't come naturally to them, said in a speech "you ain't seen nothing yet", then that would still be a colloquialism. The difference is that it's affected rather than just coming naturally.

And I could just about conceive that happening in a song, though I'd be surprised.

It still ain't slang.

Edit: For that matter, some might argue that since it's "colloquial" to more places than it isn't "colloquial" to, that it's not really colloquial at all, but that gets into more complicated issues about what does and doesn't get to considered "standard".

Using the definite article with acronyms and initialisms

I'm wondering when to use or not to use the definite article, when using acronyms or initialisms in a sentence. Is there a rule for this, or does it depend on the context?

For example, let's look at some example sentences
DDR = detailed design review.

NASA is planning to launch the final shuttle soon (no article)
The FBI shut down this website (article)
ESA is a full partner in the ISS (no article, article)
The project was cancelled at the DDR. (article)

What confuses me is that if NASA or ESA would be written in full, the article would be necessary.

Answer

Generally the article is not used with acronyms (initials that can be pronounced as a word), whereas it is with initialisms (initials where the letters themselves are pronounced). I would actually use the article with 'ESA' in the examples you gave, and so 'NASA' (acronym) doesn't get an article, but 'FBI', 'ESA', and 'DDR' (initialisms) do.

That said, there are initialisms where one wouldn't use the article either; you can usually work it out by expanding it and seeing whether you would use the article with the full sentence. Is the initialism talking about a specific thing (use the article), or a notion in general (don't use the article)? eg.

• The CPU is overheating (The Central Processing Unit is overheating).


• DRM is bad for consumers (Digital Rights Management is bad for consumers).

Acronyms don't tend to ever get an article, however (at least I can't think of any) because once they become pronounced as a name, they are treated like proper nouns, which don't receive an article (James did this; Microsoft did that; France did this; NASA did that).

grammar - Correct grammatical number for English money

Which of the following is correct or better?
A) Here's £5.
B) Here are £5.
In case both should be correct, could you explain why?
Thanks a lot in advance.

conversation - Is it right to 'Hmmm'?

While in a online conversation(by typing), how do you let know the other person that you are there listening to him/her? I suppose it would be annoying to type 'okay' or 'yes' all the time and right now, I use 'Hmmm' or 'mmm' as if I am nodding my head to what he says. I am not sure this is the right way or is there something better?

Answer

The normal way to respond to the bore person on the other end is to type something that is an intelligent response to whatever that person is bloviating talking about. Useless interjections don't do much except break up the flow, especially in multi-party chats.

Which preposition to use with "stay current"?

I am unsure what preposition should be used with "stay current" (staying up to date). Are all these variations valid and have equal meaning?

stay current with

stay current on

stay current in

The sentence that this will be used in is:

I stay current [with/on/in] different topics of the computer game industry.

grammaticality - was or were in Subjunctive Mood

Which of following sentences is formed properly? Why?

Although Reza has a successful career as a lawyer, he still wishes he
was a rock musician.

or

Although Reza has a successful career as a lawyer, he still wishes he

were a rock musician.

grammatical number - Are two singular nouns together singular or plural?

I'm writing a research paper with several classmates for school. However, there's a sentence that we, as well as others who have reviewed our paper, disagree with on how to write. Which sentence is more proper, grammatically?

Yet, alcohol usage and abuse still continue.

Yet, alcohol usage and abuse still continues.

I realize that this is probably a trivial question, but I would appreciate any help nonetheless.

Answer

My impression is that alcohol use and alcohol abuse are overlapping but hardly coextensive entities. Consequently I would revise your sentence to say something along the lines of

Yet alcohol use and abuse remain extremely common.

In making this recommendation, I don't deny that cases may arise in which a singular verb works better than a plural verb with a subject that looks plural but is understood as a unitary thing. For example,

Cutting and pasting in Word is a simple procedure.

sounds far better to me than either

Cutting and pasting in Word are a simple procedure.

or

Cutting and pasting in Word are simple procedures.

because I understand cutting and pasting to be two parts of a single procedure in Word, not two separate procedures that often occur in tandem.

nouns - Which comes first: cat or dog?

Which comes first in a sentence?

I know some word pairs such as bacon and eggs, where bacon always comes first. E.g:

Make me bacon and eggs for dinner, honey.

Cats and dogs are the two most common pets I know of. What is the preferred order?

1. Dogs are superior.

   
   
   
   

   
   

   Don't put dogs and cats together, they might fight!

   
   




2. Cats are superior.

   
   
   

   
   

   Don't put cats and dogs together, they might fight!

   
   

Answer

Given the phrase it's raining cats and dogs, you might be led to believe that this is the usual ordering. However, COCA gives the following frequencies:

cats and dogs    272
dogs and cats    359

So it seems there isn't really a preferred ordering.

grammar - Difference between 'He has been involved' and 'He has been watching TV'

From the sentence

He has been watching TV,

I understand that it is a present perfect continuous tense that started in the past and is continuing in the present time.
But I get confused at times when I hear sentences like

He has been involved.

Does it mean the same thing? That the involvement started in the past and is continuing in the present time?
If not, what is the difference?

grammaticality - Gerund preceded by a genitive?

Is this sentence actually grammatical?

You know your having a rough day when kittens don't even make you smile.

The writer of this sentence may intend to mean you're instead of your but I'm just wondering if having a gerund preceded by a genitive is considered grammatical in this case.

If the sentence above is ungrammatical, why is this sentence grammatical?

He resents your being more popular than he is.

What's the difference between these two sentence that determines one to be grammatical and the other to be not?

This is how I analyze the two sentences and I can't see the difference:

1. "You know it when kittens don't even make you smile" for
   "it" = "your having a rough day"




2. "He resents it" for "it" = "your being more popular
   than he is"

meaning - As good as it gets- grammar

I do know what "as good as it gets" means (in my language, we say "it will not get any better").

However, I do not understand the grammar here:
Firstly, does the "get" mean a change of state here?
Secondly, why the present tense? It can get better in the future, can't it?

Could I say "as stupid as he gets?" What would that mean?

EDIT: I have found this one: I was expecting there to be more people at this dance party, and I was hoping there would be more nice ladies/gentlemen for me to meet. Is this as good as it WILL get?
If this is a permanent concept, why that person use a future tense?

Answer

When the context is absolute ("as good as," meaning "the best"), then the present tense is used to indicate permanence. "The best" is permanent because it is never better or worse; it always is what it is. There is no future or past tense for an absolute condition, because an absolute condition is considered not to change.

So your confusion comes from this: You are thinking of some thing or some object as "becoming" something, but the structure of the phrase does not refer to any particular thing: it refers to the absolute state. The absolute state of "bestness" is a concept that never changes, so it is referred to in the present tense.

Here are two more ways of looking at it: 1. You were trying to correlate "get" with "become," and that has some validity, but it's hard to see the correlation when you just correlate the present tenses. Try taking your translation ("it will not get any better") and put "become" in there, and that should make sense to you ("it will not become any better"). 2. Consider that there could be another word in the phrase "as good as it gets". It could say "as good as it ever gets." Ever is implied; we don't need it, but if you put it back in, doesn't that make more sense to you?

etymology - Did English ever have a word for 'yes' for negative questions?

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).}

Is ‘round’ without an apostrophe wrong in these cases?

Sometimes the word around turns into round, e.g., in the following sentence:

They were going round and round in a circle.

Shouldn’t you put an apostrophe before round in such cases, from the standpoint of English orthography (i.e. the rule that when you omit some part of the original word, you put an apostrophe there)?

For example, it seems to me more natural to put an apostrophe before cause if the word is really because, e.g.:

I like coffee ’cause it makes me feel great.

grammaticality - Is "I already have two stamps drawn" grammatically correct?

Is it grammatically correct and is it the right way to say that I have something already made and I'm still doing it, in this case drawing the stamps?

Because as far as I know, 'have' should be after 'I', like this: 'I have already (but what should go there then?) two stamps drawn'?

Answer

The sentence you write should have a different order of words. It should be:

I have already drawn two stamps.

You can use this structure to say that you have completed something, i.e. drawing two stamps. It can imply that your activity of drawing may continue, but its primary use is that of showing completion of an action in the past with results that are visible in the present.

Difference between 'which' and 'that' in restrictive (defining) relative clauses

Excuse me if this topic has been brought up before though I couldn't find it. It seems that there are many similar topics related to both defining and non-defining clauses but there is still one question that bothers me.
I want to know about the difference between wh- pronouns (who, which, what...) vs. that in restrictive relative clause.

For example:
The man that I saw at the mall looked puzzled.
The man who I saw at the mall looked puzzled.
I omitted commas intentionally, as I'm willing to talk about defining clauses only.

The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language gives quite vague description on that and I cannot think about actual examples:

"Relative clauses are so called because they are related by their form to an antecedent. They contain within their structure an anaphoric element whose interpretation is determined by the antecedent. This anaphoric element may be overt or covert. In the overt case the relative clause is marked by the presence of one of the relative words who, whom, whose, which, etc., as or within the initial constituent: clauses of this type we call wh relatives. In non-wh relatives the anaphoric element is covert, a gap; this class is then subdivided into that relatives and bare relatives depending on the presence or absence of that."
Thanks in advance!

UPD: I know that it seems that in general there is no need to dig for this information but still I need this for my research.

Answer

As Janus Bahs Jacquet states in the comments, the difference is essentially one of formality. The Cambridge Grammar of English states the following general principle:

In a wide range of informal styles, that is used instead of who/whom or

which in defining relative clauses. (p571)

This principle is confirmed by Swan in Practical English Usage:

We often use that instead of who or which, especially in an informal
style. (p478)

Swan goes on to note:

That is especially common after quantifiers like all, every(thing), something, any(thing), nothing, little, few, much, only, and after
superlatives. (p478)

When the relative reference is to a person, Swan states:

That is often used in identifying relative clauses instead of
who/whom/which. That is most common as an object or as a subject
instead of which. That can be used as a subject instead of who, but
this is quite informal. (p482)

The Cambridge Grammar of English notes (of defining/identifying relative clauses):

That may refer to the complement of a preposition, but not when the

preposition is placed immediately before the relative pronoun:

• The other girl that I told you about also lives in Bristol.

So, the following is not grammatical:

The other girl about that I told you also lives in Bristol.

It must be: ... about whom ... . Of course, this very formal usage conforms to the general principle noted above.

grammaticality - Discontinuous noun phrase and apposition involving object complements

I was wondering whether these uses of discontinuity are valid. Here are two uses I would like to question:

The use of discontinuous noun phrase:

[1a] He made the system useless that could have been revolutionary if

developed by a better programmer.

"Useless" is an object complement while the italicized phrase is the noun phrase, or the object. As you can see, the object complement interrupts this long noun phrase.

If there was no discontinuity, it would've been something like this:

[1b] He made the system that could have been revolutionary if
developed by a better programmer useless.

Which is quite clumsy.

Now, here is the use of discontinuous apposition:

[2a] He made the system useless, an invention that could have been
revolutionary.

"Useless", once again, is the object complement, and the italicized phrase is an appositive modifying "system", the object. This appositive, instead of being placed right after its antecedent, is disconnected by "useless".

If there was no discontinuity present, it should have been in this format:

[2b] He made the system, an invention that could have been
revolutionary, useless.

Well, it sounds stretched to me.

So I have shown uses of discontinuous noun phrase and apposition, which I do not know are grammatical.

Are these uses grammatical?

EDIT:

Some similar uses: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraposition (where it says examples).

politeness - How does one address a blended family in which the members have different surnames?

I am confused about how to address a family in which all the members have kept their original surname. What is the proper way to address such a family in a note to a family which consists of a single mother, her parents and children with 3 different surnames? For example, can one say, "Dear Smith family," even though that surname is not shared by the entire family?

Are hyphenated names related to this or is that only the last name of children born to parents who both keep their surname? If blended families do use hyphenated names such as Smith-Martin, is it possible for a family when the collective members have more than 2 surnames, to use more hyphens (e.g., the Smith-Martin-Jones family)?

I found this, which gives several options for writing an address from a blended family, but my question is about the interior of a card, not the mailing address, and the family is unknown to me except the names of the children.

Answer

On the outside, it's perfectly acceptable to address the envelope to the head of the family alone. For comparison, when you write to your bank, it's traditional to address the letter to "The Manager", even though he/she might not be the one acting on your correspondence. You could also put "Ms. Smith and family" on the envelope.

On the inside of the card is a different matter. You probably have more space to write; keeping things short is not as important. It's also potentially a more informal setting. (Unless you were sending a condolences card, which would usually be formal unless you were very close to them.)

In Australia, where I'm from, using the phrase "the Jones family" is very unusual as a form of address, though I gather it must be a more common usage in the USA. We usually address the inside of the card using given names (starting with the adults), e.g. "Dear Helen, Steven, Ben and Sarah". But then Australians these days use first names for business relations and even superiors, which might not be the case where you come from. It's also a common usage here to address the people you know by name, adding and family to include the others, e.g. "Dear Helen, Steven, and family" (in this example, Helen and Steven are the adults whilst Ben and Sarah are the children).

You say that the family is unknown to you, do you mean that they are all strangers? Or that you have met the mother but not the other family members?

Is there some social connection? For example, are the children connected to your own children through school, sport, etc.? In that case, you may want to list the children by their given names, rather than include them in "and family". Unlike children addressing adults, it's rarely wrong for an adult to address a child by their first name. It might look weird to write "Dear Ms. Smith, Bob, Ben, Amy, and family", you would have to judge whether you like that style.

If you have to stay formal, then "Dear Ms. Smith and family" might be your only option apart from "the Smith-Martin-Jones family".

grammatical number - '0 result' vs '0 results'

I am developing a search control, where user types in and it returns search results. When I get no matching result what message would be correct in that case?

a) 0 result

b) 0 results

conjunction reduction - Why should I have to choose between compound sentences and compound predicates?

Sheba walked to the door and she opened it.

Sheba walked to the door and opened it.

I would use a compound sentence only if the subject in the second clause is someone other than Sheba: Sheba walked to the door and (John) opened it, for I can't see any good reason for the extra one word. But sometimes subjects in both independent clauses are the same person.

I prefer the more concise Sheba walked to the door and opened it, of course, but why should I have to have options?

subordinate clauses - Rules for pronouns

Is there a rule in English regarding whether a pronoun or the subject it refers to should appear in the subordinate clause of a complex sentence?

1. Simple example: “Whenever the little girl/she eats pizza, she/the little girl gets sick.”

Should the pronoun she or the subject the little girl appear in the subordinate clause? Is one choice wrong or is this a matter of taste and style?

2. Complex example: "In the form that the history of literature/it took as it emerged out of the historicist culture of the nineteenth century, it/the history of literature tended consciously or unconsciously to imagine series of works and cultural periods in terms of a perpetual metamorphosis or a permanent revolution."

Should the history of literature or it appear in the first clause?

3. Is there a rule about this in English? If so, how do I describe it in grammatical terms?

possessives - Yours vs. your's

Which is correct “Is that yours?” or “Is that your’s?”?

I ask because it is possessive, so I would think it would be the latter, but I typically use and see the former usage.

Are there particular cases in which one should be used instead of the other? Or is one simply correct and the other not?

This is one of the few things that still confuse me, so help is greatly appreciated.

Answer

It would definitely, unequivocally, and undeniably be yours. Same with ours. No apostrophe needed, and if you put one in, dark things may happen.

From NOAD:

yours |yôrz; yoŏrz|
possessive pronoun

1 used to refer to a thing or things belonging to or associated with the person or people that the speaker is addressing : the choice is yours | it's no business of yours.

gerunds - "...his parents' dream of *him* achieving a Cambridge degree." What is the function of "him" here?

I have a problem analysing this sentence from the point of finite/nonfinite clauses, clause elements and their functions:

He does not want to destroy his parents' dream of him achieving a Cambridge degree.

I am especially interested in the: dream of him achieving a Cambridge degree.

I know that 'achieving a Cambridge degree' is a non-finite -ing participle clause. However what is its function? And what is the function of 'of him'? Is it a postmodification?

grammar - Present Perfect vs Present perfect continuous

Could you correct the comments in parentheses, please? Are they right?

1. I have lived in Los Angeles. (A completed action; the person does not live there anymore).




2. I have lived in Los Angeles my whole life. (The person is still living there, or spent her whole life in Los Angeles, but is currently
   living in another location).




3. I have been living in Los Angeles. (She doesn't live there anymore, but was living there recently, or is still living there).




4. I have been living in Los Angeles my whole life. (The person is still living there or spent her whole life in Los Angeles, but is
   
   currently living in another location).

Thanks

Answer

1. "I have lived in Los Angeles" (Correct or "I lived in Los Angeles" is acceptable, depending on the context if A completed action, if the person does not live there anymore).




2. "I have lived in Los Angeles my whole life." (Correct if the person is still living there, or spent her whole life in Los Angeles, but is currently living in another location).





3. "I have been living in Los Angeles." (Incorrect if She doesn't live there anymore, but was living there recently, but Correct if
   she is still living there).




4. "I have been living in Los Angeles my whole life." (Incorrect if the person is still living there or spent her whole life in Los
   Angeles, but is currently living in another location. "I lived in
   Los Angeles my whole life" is the correct phrasing).

articles - Difference between "a" and "the"?

I have a question regarding the usage of articles.
What is the difference between "a" and "the"?

Why do I need to use "a" in "that was a winter I"ll never forget."? Can I use "the" instead?

Also, why do I need to use "the" in "that was the winter we went to Norway"?

Thank you very much!!^^

Answer

The is used to refer to specific or particular nouns; a is used to modify non-specific or non-particular nouns.

the = definite article

a = indefinite article

For example, if I say, "Let's read the book," I mean a specific book. If I say, "Let's read a book," I mean any book rather than a specific book.

Another example, "I went to a forest. *The forest was big.". In this first forest was indefinite one, and after I said the first sentence it became definite one and used the instead.

And in your example, winter is indefinite on "that was a winter I"ll never forget." and become definite and used the in "that was the winter we went to Norway".

Reference

grammatical number - Does "a [x] of [y]" take a singular or plural verb?

What kind of verb, singular or plural, goes with phrases like "a record of [singular or plural noun]", "the use of", "the time of"? Does the choice depend on the following nouns (a record of nouns) or on the 'first' nouns (record, use, time)? Or do these phrases obey the rule of proximity (as does "a variety of")?

I have found different example sentences on the internet (source: newspapers or magazines) with different uses. What is correct?

Examples:

• there were a record of other issues;


• there were a record of 28,000 runners;



• there was a record of these statements.

saxon genitive - Apostrophe in multiple plural posession

(writers' and teachers' wages)
or
(writers and teachers' wages)

writers and teachers are both plural

When you have multiple nouns, and all those nouns own the same thing, do you put the apostrophe showing possesion in all the nouns or just the last noun?

Answer

According to The Grammar Bible by Michael Strumpf (page 29), in a section on "Possessive Case":

Sometimes possession is shared by several nouns. In these cases, just make the last word in the series possessive.

• America and Canada's timber resources are dwindling




• Thomas and French's discovery shocked the world.




• Leslie and Eric's lasagna is to die for.

These sentences all contain nouns that show joint ownership. In the first sentence, the resources belong to America and Canada. In the second sentence, the discovery belongs to both Thomas and French. In the third sentence, the lasagna belongs to both Eric and Leslie.

To show individual ownership, apply the possessive sign to each item in the series.

• America's and Canada's timber resources are dwindling




• Thomas's and French's discoveries shocked the world. [Note: I personally would have used Thomas' instead of Thomas's.]




• Leslie's and Eric's lasagnas are to die for.

In these examples, each noun has individual ownership of resources, of a discovery, or of a lasagna. These things are not shared.

In your example, if you followed the above advice, you would write either: The writers and teachers' wages were stagnant. Or The writers' and teachers' wages were stagnant. It depends on if you consider the ownership of wages joint or individual. I would actually recommend rewording this anyway: The wages of the writers and teachers were stagnant.

Is subclassing a valid verb?

Is (to) subclass a valid verb? It comes from this background: Inheritance (object-oriented programming). A class models something and to create a subclass means to extend this class.

Answer

I have been subclassing for so long it had better be a verb.

Seriously, nouns can be easily verbed in English. We photocopy things, basketball players brick a shot, we table discussions. And on and on.

grammar - A or an before slash phrase? A or an before parenthetical phrase equivalent to slash phrase?

The other question only asks about parenthetical phrases, not slash phrases.

The other question's parenthetical phrase (answer(s) explained that it's not really a parenthetical phrase) is a separate word. Mine is an intra-word parenthetical prefix. That's different!

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Extreme votes on post often indicates that there was a(n) (dis)agreement.

When you see spam, you should cast a(n) upvote/flag.

The ship traveled across a(n) sea/ocean.

The first example's parenthetical thingymajigger is equivalent to the slash phrase "agreement/disagreement."

What's the correct singular indefinite article to use before slash phrase (this/that) and parenthetical phrases ((a)sexual, (de)criminalize)?

Answer

Such constructions are a matter of style, so there is no single "correct" way of dealing with them.

If I refer to The Chicago Manual of Style (17th ed.), 6.95:

Parentheses—stronger than a comma and similar to the dash—are used to set off material from the surrounding text. Like dashes but unlike commas, parentheses can set off text that has no grammatical relationship to the rest of the sentence.

Although I'm somewhat familiar with what you're doing with the parentheses in your examples, I believe that Chicago, at least, would not recommend putting text inside of parentheses that actually does have some kind of grammatical relationship with the rest of a sentence—especially if doing so causes awkwardness.

In general, you should write sentences in such a way that if the parenthetical information were removed, the surrounding text would be completely unaffected. (In other words, the grammar used outside the parentheses should be completely unaffected by the text inside the parentheses.)

As for slashes, here is Chicago, 6.106:

A slash most commonly signifies alternatives. In certain contexts it is a convenient (if somewhat informal) shorthand for or. It is also used for alternative spellings or names. Where one or more of the terms separated by slashes is an open compound, a space before and after the slash can make the text more legible.

      he/she
      his/her
      and/or
      Hercules/Heracles
      Margaret/Meg/Maggie
      World War I / First World War

Although it doesn't specifically mention its stance on grammar around slashes, I suspect Chicago would say that, as they are just shorthand for longer (and more formal) constructions, if their use causes a problem, then use a longer construction instead.

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In other words, when such constructions become grammatically awkward, I suspect the "proper" thing to do is to rephrase rather than to look for a specific rule of grammar (which likely doesn't exist).

For example:

Extreme votes on post often indicated that there was an agreement or disagreement.

When you see spam, you should case an upvote or flag.

They ship traveled across a sea or ocean.

On the other hand, if you are using a style guide that does say what to do in such circumstances, then follow its advice.