meaning - "The place where we promised to meet"

This is talking about a promise to meet at a certain place. However, is it grammatically correct? Is it badly phrased? It seems that it can be misinterpreted to mean that at a certain place a promise was made to meet, rather than promising to meet at a certain place later.

Answer

It is grammatical (as far as it goes - I assume you're using it as part of a longer sentence!).

It is also potentially ambiguous, as you say - it could be interpreted to mean the place where we made the promise rather than the place where the meeting will take place. However, it is more likely to be interpreted the way you want; moreover in context it is unlikely to cause much confusion, especially if there are more cues in the sentence to indicate which meaning is intended, for example:

At the appointed time, I went to the place where we agreed to meet, and began to wait.

This is very unlikely to be interpreted as the place where we made our agreement.

punctuation - How do I quote nonconsecutive sentences from a lengthy quote?

I am writing a book compiling multiple quotes from various authors. On occasion I do not want to use all of the quote; maybe 2 or 3 lines at the beginning; one in the middle; one in the end. Do I need to call that out by "... ??

jargon - What are some examples of “zombie nouns and verbs”?

This is one of the New York Times writing rules.I don't know exactly what “zombie nouns” and verbs mean here. Can someone give some examples?

Rule 6: Write With Non-Zombie Nouns and Verbs

Delve into Strunk and White’s fourth style reminder “Write with nouns and verbs” by reading about what Helen Sword calls “Zombie Nouns”:

Nouns formed from other parts of speech are called nominalizations. Academics love them; so do lawyers, bureaucrats and business writers. I call them “zombie nouns” because they cannibalize active verbs, suck the lifeblood from adjectives and substitute abstract entities for human beings.

Fight those nasty zombie nouns with vivacious verbs.

Answer

The New York Times article from which you quoted offers several examples and a definition:

Take an adjective (implacable) or a verb (calibrate) or even another noun (crony) and add a suffix like ity, tion or ism. You’ve created a new noun: implacability, calibration, cronyism. Sounds impressive, right?

What the writer is saying is that these so-called "zombie nouns" are overcomplicated and take away from language (in the writer's opinion). They specifically focus on the fact that they take away from verb usage. Another example from that article:

Zombie nouns do their worst damage when they gather in jargon-generating packs and infect every noun, verb and adjective in sight: globe becomes global becomes globalize becomes globalization. The grandfather of all nominalizations, antidisestablishmentarianism, potentially contains at least two verbs, three adjectives and six other nouns.

differences - Raise and Rise revisited - But what if it's a noun?

I come to you again from the cooking site. I see this: What is the difference between "raise" and "rise"? and it comes close to answering my question, but not quite. In my world of the cooking obsession, the words in question (or at least one of them) can also be a noun, as in "the bread's second rise". This is a quote from my most recent answer on the cooking site, "When you're ready to bake, punch down the dough again (if necessary), shape, and allow to rise as if it had never taken its little nap in the refrigerator. Of course this raise is going to take longer than non-refrigerated dough as it reaches room temperature." Those lines are clumsy as hell, but are they grammatically correct?

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

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

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

Answer

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

Two double standards:

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

Many double standards:

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

So many double standards:

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

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

Have double standards

Young adults have double standards about sexual infidelity.

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

adjectives - "A place nearby" but not "A place good"

I can ask any of:

Do you know a breakfast place nearby?
Do you know a nearby breakfast place?
Do you know a good breakfast place?

but I really can't ask:

Do you know a breakfast place good?

Is there a general rule for determining whether an adjective must come before the noun or may come, Spanish-style, after it?

Answer

The general rule is

One-word modifiers precede the noun; modifiers of more than one word follow the noun.

I call this the Eleven-year-old boy rule.

If you make a single word out of a phrase, it can precede (that's what the hyphens are for in writing), but it's got different syntax, because preceding adjectives are not declined for number.

Note the plural years and singular year below:

• A boy eleven years old rescued the princess.


• An eleven-year-old boy rescued the princess.

If you pluralized the second year, or used singular year in the first, they'd be ungrammatical.

Nearby, while it is enough of a single word to precede, still retains enough independence in its two consituents near and by to follow, as well. It's in transition from one state to the other.

Language changes, word by word and phrase by phrase, as we continue to speak it.
In fact, it changes because we continue to speak it.

Possessive s, apostrophe on end or not?

I am writing a project for college about smart phones.

Which would you say is correct in a possessive context?

Windows Phone's applications

or

Windows Phone' applications

My thoughts say the top is correct as Phone does not end in an S, but it just sounds horrible and wrong. The bottom one sounds correct but in my head is grammatically incorrect.

Answer

Your source of confusion is apparently in assuming that every time you put two nouns together, one of them must be a possessive, so you're fretting about where to put an apostrophe when there's simply no need for one in the first place.

Just as in "truck driver", "game designer", "world war" etc, what you have is simply a compound consisting of two nouns. So similarly, you can simply write "Windows Phone applications" as your intuition dictates, but there's no need for an apostrophe.

adjectives - Pluralization rule for "five-year-old children", "20 pound note", "10 mile run"

Why are year, pound and mile in the singular form in the phrases below?

• five-year-old children


• 20 pound note


• 10 mile run

Is that because they're acting as adjectives, which are always invariable in English?

Is it incorrect to say...

• five-years-old children?


• 20 pounds note?


• 10 miles run?

Answer

Those are called compound and hyphenated compound adjectives. And adjectives don't have plural forms.

Additional examples

three-storey building (three-stories bulding)

four-wheel drive (four-wheels drive)

32-bit processor (32-bits processor)

grammatical number - Can "is" be used with plural nouns?

I'm creating a short slogan describing a website's functions. The website consists of a photos storage function plus discussion boards. This is an attempt to put it shortly:

Example.com is photos plus discussions

Is it correct? Particularly, I'm not sure using "is" with plural nouns is correct.

Answer

The answer to this lies in a bit of 'language algebra.'

First of all, Example.com is singular.

Therefore, you must use the verb is when describing its state of being.

In this example, photos plus discussions is also singular - not in the sense that it is only one thing, but in the sense that it represents a singular idea. Think of it this way:

5 = (2 + 3)

One way to put this mathematical statement into words would be to say

Five is two plus three.

In this illustration, five is singular, and therefore two plus three is also singular in the sense that it is a singular representation of the combination (or sum) of two parts which make up the subject, five. It can be written or said both ways:

Five is (two plus three).

(Two plus three) is five.

Therefore,

Example.com is (photos plus discussions).

However, a better way to write this would be

Example.com is a combination of photos and discussions.

This makes it absolutely clear and eliminates any possibility of confusion or syntactic awkwardness. You may also replace is with consists of for further clarity, although this isn't absolutely necessary. I would leave it as is for the sake of simplicity, but it's up to you.

Hope this helps!

grammatical number - "Answer Key" or "Answer Keys"?

I am a native English speaker working in a team of writers for whom English is their second language. Although their level of English is very high, I do a lot of editing. We create training and in some manuals we include an 'Answer Key'. I often see people use 'Answer Keys' as a heading for this section. I instinctively change that to 'Answer Key' even though there are 'keys' to multiple assignments included in that section. I can't explain why but I think it should always be singular, although 'key' used in other contexts can undoubtedly be plural. Can anyone shed light on if I am following a rule correctly or if it is just a personal feeling?

Answer

It seems like the proper use is the singular Key, especially if it is a complete section.

This is similar to a Legend, which is defined as

a table on a map, chart, or the like, listing and explaining the symbols used.

where the whole table, which contains many pieces of information, is referred to in singular.

Keys are not what appear in this section, answers are. Rather the section is a Key.

grammar - "Is" with singular and plural nouns

I came across the sentence

My biggest grievance is grammar mistakes.

I'd be inclined to write it as

My biggest grievance is with grammar mistakes.

or

Grammar mistakes are my biggest grievance.

What is the correct way to write this, and why?

Capitalization of a word after an ellipsis

Should I capitalize the word "don't" in the following sentence?

Listen... don’t panic.

Answer

No, you do not capitalize the word following the ellipsis. I have only ever seen and used spaces in ellipses in academic writing when omitting text from the middle of a quote. For instance, from the Wikipedia article for linguistic ellipses, in the sentence:

In linguistics, ellipsis (from the Greek: ἔλλειψις, élleipsis,
"omission") or elliptical construction refers to the omission, from a
clause, of one or more words that are nevertheless understood in the
context of the remaining elements.

I can use ellipses to remove information and inform the reader of the missing text, as you can see if you compare my new sentence to the original:

In linguistics, ellipsis . . . refers to the omission . . . of one or
more words that are nevertheless understood in the context of the
remaining elements.

In your case, it sounds like you're writing some form of dialogue. When using an ellipsis in dialogue, you are indicating a pause in the sentence. You do not use spaces or capitalization surrounding the ellipsis. In the sentence you provided, the correct style is:

"Listen...don’t panic."

grammaticality - I and am

I sometimes find myself writing something like this:

XXX is a project I admire and am very interested in.

The "I and am " feels strange here. It somehow sounds more natural in the third person: "He admires and is very interested in...."

Am I just imagining things – is it OK to use this construction, or should I use something completely different?

Answer

This sentence is an example of Conjunction Reduction, the syntactic rule that deletes repeated material in conjoined constituents, for example

• Bill washed the dishes and Bill swept the floor. ➝
  Bill washed the dishes and swept the floor.



• Bill washed the dishes and Bill dried the dishes. ➝
  Bill washed and dried the dishes.

The relative clause modifying project in the original sentence is the focus, so let's get it out of a subordinate clause and see what it looks like:

• I admire and am very interested in the project.

which comes from

• I admire the project and I am very interested in the project.

by a perfectly normal application of Conjunction Reduction.

There's nothing grammatically wrong with this sentence.

One thing that may make it feel wrong to some -- but not others; there's a lot of individual variation here, since everybody makes up their own internal rules, for their own reasons, about what "sounds right" -- is that the first verb of the conjoined VP (admire) is uninflected for person and number, while the second verb (am) is inflected, for first person singular present tense.

Both verbs agree of course with the same subject, but morphologically instead of syntactically, which may produce some distress to those who require more grammatical parallelism between conjoined verbs.

Another related difficulty might be that the inflected form am is so closely linked to its subject pronoun I that it is difficult to separate them, and indeed most of the time they're contracted to I'm. This makes am feel rather isolated out there.

Again, this isn't a grammatical problem per se, but it can occasion some distress in some readers.

I say "readers" because nobody would say such a sentence, of course. We'd say I'm instead of am, by repeating the subject -- and adding no new syllables, so timing isn't affected. This is allowed syntactically because Conjunction Reduction is an optional rule applied to reduce unwelcome repetition, and in any given case this repetition may simply not be unwelcome.

pronouns - Is the singular "they" acceptable in formal writing?

I am linking to this post for reference.

The acceptability of "they" as a singular pronoun is growing. Has it grown to the point where it is acceptable in formal publications, such as journal articles, business proposals, or political speeches?

It seems to be that it is not quite there; most people are still too concerned about being negatively judged for it. However, the options of "one", "he or she", and "s/he" are similarly avoided for their cumbersome and pedantic tones. I often see either "he" or "she" used exclusively as an alternative, however, as there is no official stance on one pronoun or the other referring to either or, this opens the door for issues of implicit gender discrimination.

I try my best to skirt the issue altogether when I write, often dramatically revising paragraph -- and even paper-- structure. This, of course, is ridiculous. What is the best option for communicating the very commonly needed genderless singular personal pronoun in formal situations?

grammar - Use of 'not' in questions

When is it okay to use 'not' when posing a question?
I believe that the person asking would include the 'not 'when he believes the implied to be true.
For example:
"Are you going to the store?
"Are you not going to the store?"

Then the question of how to properly answer it.

"Yes, I am going to the store"
"No, I am going to the store."

and if they arent going...
"No, I am not."
"Yes, I am not."

I wonder if this is a French rule and therefore confusing to English speakers; where 'Si' is used instead of 'Oui'.

Anyways, your thoughts?

grammar - Why do personal pronouns always come last after a list of nouns?

Why do we always put "I" or "me" at the end of a list of nouns in a sentence. For example we would say "John, Sam, and I are going to the mall" instead of "I, John, and Sam are going to the mall"

Is there a grammatical/logical reason for this, or is this just a convention that we're accustomed to? The sentence would make just as much sense no matter where "I" goes in the list.

Answer

I don't think it's true that you always put personal pronouns last at the end of a list. For example, "you" tends to be listed first,as in: "You and Mike did a good job on that project."

I think that emphasizes that the practice is a matter of courtesy. You list the person you are speaking directly to first, yourself last, and everyone else in between: "You, Bob, Mary, and I were the only ones left."

Can the verb “tend” be followed by a bare infinitive (“tend be” v.s. “tend to be”)?

I thought tend (used to imply “regularly or frequently behaving in a particular way or having a certain characteristic – Oxford’s def; 1.1) always has to be used with the to-infinitive form of verbs.

Today, however, I encountered this example:

Most meta-analyses show that, with some exceptions, well-established
psychotherapies tend be approximately equivalent in efficacy (Wampold,
Mondin, Moody, Stich, Benson, & Ahn, 1997).

And while I couldn’t find anything regarding tend in regards to these two forms (with or without “be”), searching .edu domains precisely for "tend be" returns some 12,000 results. E.g.:

Fungal-like protists and the Chytridiomycota tend be aseptate, except to delimit reproductive or specialized cells (such as sporangia and gametangia).

---

The disadvantages of physical sunscreens is that they tend be thicker and look a little white on the skin.

---

[The book] reveals that readers [...] tend be more open to diversity; politically tolerant; less authoritarian; less likely to support the use of deadly force or torture; more politically active; and are more likely to have a negative view of the Bush administration.

---

It has long been appreciated that genes that perform core functions tend be more conserved in amino acid sequence over long evolutionary time periods.

So, is it ok to write “tends be” instead of “tends to be”?

Answer

The OED provides for no such usage. Adapting the examples:

1) Tend can be used with to/towards.

Walter tended to run.

or

Walter tended towards corpulence.

or

... tends towards infinity.

2) Tend can be used with an adverbial:

fire is hot and tends upwards

---

No dictionary seems to provide for a usage like:

... tend be ...

---

Verdict: typo or perhaps a written form of informal/idiomatic speech. (The "tend be" form sounds slightly familiar to my ear, like I've heard people saying it; particularly in the form "they do tend be ...".)

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.

verbs - Proper to add tense to acronyms, abbreviations and initialisms

What is the correct way to pluralize an acronym? asked about pluralising acronyms, abbreviations and initialisms, but is there a standard way to add verb endings e.g. -ing and -ed (what are these called?), at least in informal English?

For example, which of these is/are best?

1. I'm SMSing her.



2. I'm SMS-ing her.


3. I'm SMS'ing her.

I know I can rephrase it to "I'm sending her an SMS." but I wish to use SMS as a verb.

Similarly,

1. He FUBARed.



2. He FUBAR-ed.


3. He FUBAR'ed.


4. He FUBAR-d.


5. He FUBAR'd.

In the latter set, as the verb is actually the F ("foul", or something more explicit) — the expanded sentence being "He fouled up beyond all recognition." — should it even be "He FedUBAR." or similar?

Answer

If you're using a non-verb acronym or initialism as a verb, you're already in the realm of jargon. If you're writing in a context where that's acceptable, you should add a simple "ed" or "ing" for a suffix unless you're going for a humorous effect. When acronyms are absorbed into the language, they may acquire verb forms; for example, the verb meaning "to produce a laser beam" is "lase," retroactively treating the acronym for "light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation" as if it meant "something that 'lases.'"

syntactic analysis - How to emphasize that a problem is represented even in smaller group?

I am trying to emphasize the significance and prevalence of some problem by showing that even in a small group of people this problem is represented very well.

Just for example, let's say that we are discussing crime problem and I know that there are many people who were robbed in my school. At the same time, I know that there are 3 people in my class who were robbed in the last month, which is a lot.
I want to express the following idea:

look, even in our class there are 3 robbed people, imagine how many people are robbed in the school overall

So, I come up with something like this:

Only among our class 3 people were robbed in the last month!

or

3 people were robbed in the last month, only among our class!

(I am not sure if it should be "only" or "just")

However, one guy has said that this sentence would confuse him, because it sounds like a statement of fact that all robbed people were only from our class, or that our class is the only class where exactly (or at least) 3 people were robbed.

Is it true? Or is it just a matter of where you place an accent in this sentence
when you say it?

If it helps, then it would sound like this in my mother language (Russian):

Только среди учеников нашего класса 3 человека были ограблены в этом месяце!
Только в нашем классе 3 человека были ограблены в этом месяце!

Answer

You need the phrase "In our class alone". As in:

In our class alone, three people were robbed in the last month!

This gets rid of the ambiguity as to whether the people who were robbed came only from your class. In the above sentence, it is explicit that we are talking exclusively about one class, not the whole school. I'd recommend you follow it up with a statement about what this implies about the crime rate of the whole school.

Correct capitalization for "of" in an acronym definition

For an acronym that includes the word "of", do you capitalize its usage within the definition (or expansion) of the acronym

For example, in the follow sentence:

My coworker Steve suffers from Complete Avoidance of Work Syndrome (CAOWS).

Should of be written as Of?

Answer

First, some definitions from the Chicago Manual of Style:

• acronym refers to terms based on the initial letters of their various elements and read as single words (AIDS, laser, NASA,
  scuba);



• initialism refers to terms read as a series of letters (AOL, NBA, XML);


• contraction refers to abbreviations that include the first and last letters of the full word (Mr., amt.).

As for the capitalization of these constructs, CMS has these recommendations:

Initialisms tend to appear in all capital letters, even when they are
not derived from proper nouns (HIV, VP, LCD). With frequent use,

however, acronyms—especially those of five or more letters—will
sometimes become lowercase (scuba); those that are derived from proper
nouns retain an initial capital. Chicago generally prefers the
all-capital form, unless the term is listed otherwise in Webster’s.
[NAFTA (not Nafta)]

On the other hand, if the words in a spelled-out version of an acronym
or initialism are not derived from proper nouns or do not themselves
constitute a proper noun (as in the official name of an organization),
they should generally be lowercased, even when they appear alongside

the abbreviated form. [transmission-control protocol/Internet protocol
(TCP/IP)]

So, whether CAOWS is:

• an acronym, pronounced cows


• an initialism, pronounced "SEE-AY-OH-DUBYA-ESS"

the Chicago Manual, at least, would recommend you write:

My coworker Steve suffers from Complete Avoidance of Work Syndrome
(CAOWS).

Note that in Nathan's comment, it's necessary to lowercase DoS (an acronym for denial-of-service) to disambiguate it from DOS (an acronym for disk operating system). I don't think CAOWS has any such problem.

word choice - Can I use "How about.." in this way?

So, imagine that you wanted to suggest something to a friend of yours, like watching TV or go to the movies.
You would say "How about watching TV?" or "What about going to the movies?"
But what if you wanted that person to express his or her opinion on something you wanted to do?

For example, imagine you wanted to write a letter to someone, and you asked for someone's opinion on that. How would you ask that? Can you say, for example: "How about I wrote her a letter?" or "How about I write her a letter?"? I don't think that "How about writing her a letter?" means the same, because, for me, it just doesn't feel that the person who is practicing the action (me) is explicit enough. I feel like "How about writing her a letter?" doesn't trasmit that I am the one supposed to write it. So, my question is: Can I use "How about I wrote her a letter?" or "How about I write her a letter?" or "How about me writing her a letter?" and if it is correct to say those sentences, is there any difference in their meanings?

Answer

I'm not totally sure I grasp what you're asking, but are any of these phrases along the right lines?

Basically, you've written a letter, and want to ask someone to give you their opinion on it?

• I wrote her a letter. What are your thoughts on it?


• Would you like to read the letter I wrote for her?


• Can you give me your thoughts on the letter I wrote for her?

Or maybe if you're asking someone what they think about you writing a letter, before you write it;

• Do you think I should write her a letter?


• I could write her a letter, what do you think?

---

Also, "How about I wrote her a letter?" or "How about I write her a letter?"

• Wrote = past tense, so you can't use this to talk about doing something in the future.


• Writing = present tense, "I'm currently writing her a letter.".


• Write = correct, future tense. "How about I write her a letter?"

When do i use an apostrophe

do I need to use an apostrophe in a sign I had made,

CONTRACTORS ENTRANCE

thanks for your help

usage - Can altering the syntax of a sentence, without in any way changing the diction used in describing the subject itself, change the subject's number?

There have been debates raging both here and on ELL about this, but the question has, to this point, been focused solely on expletive constructions with compound subjects. This is not intended to ask that very same question.

I'd like to clarify that I'm asking about a much broader range of constructions, and, more specifically, the nature of subjects themselves; and that I'm strongly questioning that the tenet of basic Subject-Verb agreement is variable and therefore not applicable to all sentence constructions.

In other words, I'm asking: how, if ever, can a plural subject be considered or be treated as a singular subject; how can a subject's number vary without rephrasing subject itself; and while there is room for variation in number with mass and/or collective nouns, how can this variation occur with ordinary, countable nouns?

To keep all things parallel, I'm both excluding compound subjects that, separately, agree in number and restricting this to only compound subjects joined by and (or as well as, along with, etc.).

I'm making this distinction to rule out examples that could be based on elision--e.g., there's a bat and there's a ball on the table could potentially be elided to there's a bat and ball on the table.

In each of the following examples, the subject is exactly the same and is plural, which to me suggests that, in each and every set, only 2 and 3 can be technically correct (i.e., in formal English). I think that most would regard the fourth option to be completely incorrect in all examples. And I know that many would say that, in the first (i.e. expletive) set, number one could also be correct. That particular line of reasoning is what I'm inquiring about.

Here are the expletive possibilities I'm starting with:

1. There is a bat, three balls, and a glove on the table.





2. There are a bat, three balls, and a glove on the table.




3. There are three balls, a bat, and a glove on the table.




4. There is three balls, a bat, and a glove on the table.

Active voice:

1. A bat, three balls, and a glove is on the table.


2. A bat, three balls, and a glove are on the table.



3. A bat, a glove, and three balls are on the table.


4. A bat, a glove, and three balls is on the table.

Inverted sentences:

1. On the table is a bat, three balls, and a glove.


2. On the table are a bat, three balls, and a glove.


3. On the table are three balls, a bat, and a glove.



4. On the table is three balls, a bat, and a glove.

Passive voice: (note: As Peter Shor correctly indicates, is lain is not a passive construction.) I specifically used to lie incorrectly intentionally because it's closer to my other sentences semantically. I meant to say The items are/have been lying on the table, rather than The items are/were laid on the table. While the latter, in all bold type is technically the proper passive construction, the former is a closer match to the thoughts being expressed in the other examples:

1. On the table is lain a bat, three balls, and a glove. On the table is laid a bat, three balls, and a glove.


2. On the table are lain a bat, three balls, and a glove. On the table have a bat, three balls, and a glove been laid.


3. On the table are lain three balls, a bat, and a glove. On the table were laid a bat, three balls, and a glove.


4. On the table is lain/is lying three balls, a bat, and a glove. On the table was laid a bat, three balls, and a glove.

Interrogatives using Subject-Auxiliary inversion:

1. Is a bat, three balls, and a glove [they] there on the table?


2. Are a bat, three balls, and a glove [they] there on the table?


3. Are three balls, a bat, and a glove [they] there on the table?


4. Is three balls, a bat, and a glove [they] there on the table?

I have fixed these questions to indicate the way in which there functions in expletives and to demonstrate the actual subject based on the Subject-Auxiliary inversion used to form questions.

In all of these examples, the subject is not at all changed, and in only one set (passive) was it necessary for me to change the verb. In fact, in all but the passive set, I've done nothing but remove there from the sentence.

I've always been instructed that while revising the sentence so that the item in the list nearest the verb is in agreement with the verb is preferred, it's perfectly fine to say A bat, three balls (-or- a ball), and a glove are on the table.

Is there something, that I am perhaps missing, that makes the first in each set acceptable? Any source(s) that indicate that syntax dictates number would be particularly appreciated.

Answer

The easy answer is, no. None of the first sentences are correct, except for the first sentence in the first set.

This I have seen and heard regularly. The rest of the sets, numbers 2 and 3 are correct.

Edited: 11 December, 9:25pm EST

I have searched and searched, but have not found a single source that will allow for any wiggle room under the Most High Law of Subject-Verb Agreement. There is never considered a subject, so the subject is, of course, the collection of objects on the table, and regardless of how they are listed, it is a plural subject. I have no grammatical foot to stand on, hence Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation applies.

However, in usage, I will plead my case to Psycholinguistics, wherein research has generated theories in abundance about the architecture and mechanisms of sentence comprehension. At what point in reading does information become available to the reader? Issues such as "modular" versus "interactive" processing have caused heated theoretical rifts in the field.

Sentences are read in separate modules with which the reader interacts. but which have limited interaction with each other. While I generally hold to an interactive theory of sentence processing, in this case I am admitting that the modules are not playing well together at all. In an effort to avoid tedious squabbling, one grabs hold of the first module and deals with its behavior, whilst allowing the others to run amok. Admittedly this is poor parenting on the whole, but what's a person to do? One can listen to the cacophony only so long before becoming overwhelmed.

I place some of the blame on the misbehaving modules. Perhaps it is genetic, as a module does not come into a sentence as a tabula rasa. If the modules would cooperate and line up nicely, there would be little problem.

I summarize that the allocation of attention and the misbehavior of the modules makes this an impossible situation, one that defies the Most High Law. I throw myself on the mercy of the Court.

John Q Public is the Judge.

punctuation - Should I put a comma before the last item in a list?

Should I put a comma before the last item in a list?

I would like crackers, cheese and some soda.
I would like crackers, cheese, and some soda.

Answer

Using a comma before the last item in a list is known as the Oxford Comma, sometimes the Serial Comma. It is used before conjunctions in a list like this with three or more items. Its use is purely written style and optional. It is more common in America outside journalism, and much less common in other English speaking areas of the world. There are arguments for and against which usually come down to comprehension. Wikipedia quotes these ambiguities:

To my parents, Mother Teresa and the Pope.

To my parents, Mother Teresa, and the Pope.

Also on that wiki page you can find lots of links to certain style guides. Comma use is something of a grey area though, and everyone has his own style. Pick what reduces ambiguity.

Language log has an interesting article on how reading comprehension can be improved with comma use, including this type.

etymology - Might the word "hushpuppy" be a corruption of a Native American word?

I have always doubted the traditional explanation of the origin of the word "hushpuppy" since the word sounds like a borrowing from a Native American language. The 'explanation' that it comes from someone frying up a dollop of cornbread batter to quiet the dogs sounds like folk etymology.

.                     .    (image courtesy of Wikipedia)

The practice of making bread from ground maize comes from Native Americans, after all, so it is not a stretch to think that a form of Native American bread might have retained a Native American name, possibly in a corrupted form.

Are there any Native American linguists in this group who might shed some light on this subject?

differences - I like "the" music or I like music?

1. I like music.



2. I like the music.

I know the difference between the previous two sentences is that 'the music' is specifically talking about a music.

Is there any more difference in meaning? Can you tell me some cases where the definite article isn't required?

Answer

I think you got it just fine:

You use the article when refering to some specific instance of something,

without article, you are making a general statement, often about the type of something.

Some examples:

"I like fish" (...but don't like pork) vs. "I like the fish" (...which is on my plate.)

"I dread christmas" (...because it's always such a hassle) vs. "I dread this christmas" (...because my Mum died last month.)

"I see clouds" (here, whereas you, somewhere else, see sunshine.) vs. "I see the clouds" (...threatening to rain on my laundry and yours.)

grammar - What (if any) is the proper hyphenation for the phrase "it's all too easy"?

Are any of the following correct?

It's all too-easy
It's all-too-easy
It's all too easy

Explanation/citations would be greatly appreciated

Answer

There is no need to hyphenate the phrase unless it is used either as a compound noun or as a compound adjective.

As a compound noun, it is likely to be a nickname, in which case, capitalise the initial letters:

• 
  
  It's All-Too-Easy (as in names such as John-Paul, or Maria-Luisa)


• It's 'All Too Easy' (as a nickname) and It's All Too Easy (as a non-hyphenated name) would both also be acceptable.

As a compound adjective, it would need a determiner before it, e.g.,

• It's the all-too-easy solution to all our problems. Don't you believe it.

ADDITION:

In the plural, eg 'all-too-easy solutions' no determiner is needed, as Kris commented, below.

verb agreement - Singular vs. Plural with Multiple Gerunds as Subject (IE: [Gerund] and [Gerund] are/is [something].)

I'm trying to find out whether I should use a singular or plural verb when there are multiple gerunds as the subject of the sentence.

For example:

Running the correct course and keeping a steady pace are/is necessary in
order to win.

With either one of these by itself, "is" would be correct:

Running the correct course is necessary in order to win.

Keeping a steady pace is necessary in order to win.

With both gerunds combined, I can't seem to figure out whether the verb should stay singular since each phrase is singular, or if it should become plural since there are two connected by "and".

If we just treat the gerunds as regular nouns, then obviously it would become "are", but I'm not sure if gerunds have the exact same rules as regular nouns.

I know that if the sentence was:

Running the correct course and keeping a steady pace are both necessary.

That "are" would be correct, but without the "both" it sounds incorrect to me.

Does anyone know the official rule here?

Answer

My opinion: plural except in a special case (see below). The only explicit statements I've found to corroborate my opinion are on Answers.com regarding subject/verb agreement and a chat board for college students, neither of which strikes me as particularly authoritative. Nothing I can find indicates that anything other than a plural is appropriate when the subject of the sentence is two of anything conjoined by "and," including two gerunds.

Special case: gerunds that go together to form a unit of activity: drinking and driving, or texting and driving, etc. In those cases, when the point is the combined act, then a singular is nearly always used. Now that I think about it, the singular or plural helps differentiate: "walking and chewing gum is a skill mastered by most people" versus "walking and chewing gum are physically active tasks, thinking is not, but all three burn calories."

auxiliary verbs - Tense form after the word did

I read this explanation about did from http://www.learnersdictionary.com/qa/did-main-verb-base-form-or-past-tense-form
. Does that mean all the verb after did in a question will remain as it is?

Example like :
What did your sister use to dig the sand?

We have two verbs here and we don't have to change them to tense word?

Answer

You are largely correct. The verb 'do' is an auxiliary/helping verb. Any verb that comes after it remains in the infinitive form, meaning that it is unconjugated.

What did your sister use to dig the sand?

Here, the verb 'did' is the conjugated auxiliary verb, so you need not conjugate 'use' any further. However, the reason you do not conjugate 'dig' here is because it is part of the to-infinitive.

Punctuations for quotes in a list

"make a monkey of someone", " don't monkey with that lock!", and "where have you been, you little monkey!" are examples of sentences where monkey have different meaning.

Should the comma be placed inside the quotes, or outside?

To make it clearer, I am referring to placing the comma when the quoted sentence already has a punctuation like the exclamation mark, or the question mark.

Answer

American style is to place the comma inside the quotes. This is universally the case in publishing and accords with all style guides (Chicago, AP, NYT, etc.). The only exception is is in academic works, particularly philosophy texts, where a word is being specially defined and offset with single quotes. That exception, however, is not widespread and some houses, such as Oxford University Press, use the single quote as closing punctuation.

word choice - “By whom?” vs. “Who by?”

Are “by whom?” and “who by?” perfect equivalents?

I have the feeling that the use of “who by?” is just a way of avoiding use “whom” but I have no evidence or proof. The anglophone people I talk to hardly use “whom”.

Are both expressions equally used, or is the difference between them only regional?

Answer

They're not perfect equivalents, but they're pretty close. The biggest difference, of course, is that whom is a pretty formal word, so "By whom?" is a very awkward reply to, say, "He got f'd." Either "By who?" or "Who by?" would be much more natural.

Another difference is that if someone uses a by-phrase that you didn't quite catch, or that you're surprised about, you can reply "By whom?" or "By who?", but not "Who by?", to request a repetition. ("By who?" is the most common wording in this case: "This book is by Mr. Aasefalsdfjaose." "By who?")

grammar - Does the present perfect imply an action finished in the past?

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:

1. Why was the present perfect tense used? Why not just the past simple tense?




2. 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.

verbs - Use of "did" in an affirmative sentence before subject

I wrote the following sentence in an article:

Only in June it created repositories.

The editor corrected me:

Only in June did it create repositories.

What's the explanation for "did" in this case? It doesn't sound like emphasis, because the following word is not a verb.

Answer

1. Only in June was it creating repositories.




2. Only in June it was creating repositories. (ungrammatical)

In example (1) we see the auxiliary and subject change places. In example (2), the auxiliary and subject are the same as they would be in a normal sentence. It is ungrammatical.

3. Only in June did it create repositories.




4. Only in June it created repositories. (ungrammatical)

In sentence (3), again, we see subject auxiliary inversion. Sentence (4) has no auxiliary - this is because it has no inversion. However, it is ungrammatical.

Although we can insert auxiliaries for emphasis, the use of do is obligatory in the sentences above. It is not about emphasis. It is because we need to invert the subject and auxiliary verb. They have to change places. We can't do this if there is no auxiliary, so in sentence (3) we use the 'dummy' auxiliary DO so that we can create an inversion. Note that the main verb create can't be used for inversion:

• Only in June created it repositories. (ungrammatical)

Moving only to the front of a sentence will trigger subject auxiliary inversion in main clauses under certain conditions. Here are some examples:

• Only if we've received the papers can we release the prisoner.



• *Only if we've received the papers we can release the prisoner. (wrong)


• Only after the concert did I notice Pavarotti in the back row.


• *Only after the concert I saw Pavarotti in the back row. (wrong)


• Only in extreme circumstances did they steal.


• *Only in extreme circumstances they stole. (wrong)


• Only in the houses of parliament will you find this many cads.


• *Only in the houses of parliament you will find this many cads. (wrong)

The grammatical sentences have certain features in common:

• i) These sentences all have subordinate preposition phrases which occur before the main clause (phrases with if, before, after, during and so forth)


• ii) These prepositions are always prepositions of time, place or condition.


• iii) The head preposition in each case is being modified by only.


• iv) Only must have the sense of not except in such examples.

When these conditions apply, subject auxiliary inversion will apply. Notice that although only modifies the subordinate phrase, the inversion occurs in the main clause. The subject auxiliary inversion does not occur in the subordinate clauses.

The Original Poster's Question

The main clause in the Original Poster question is a version of the canonical (normal) clause:

• it created repositories.

However, this main clause is fronted by a temporal preposition phrase in June. This preposition phrase in June is being modified by the adverb only. This requires us to invert the subject and the auxiliary verb in the main clause. As we previously noted, the main clause is:

• it created repositories.

There is no auxiliary in this clause - so we need to use the dummy auxiliary, do for the inversion:

• did it create repositories.

This gives us the sentence:

• Only in June did it create repositories.

Hope this is helpful!

punctuation - Syntax for marking incorrect examples of language

I have noticed various marks in example sentences to denote incorrect examples of English:

This is correct.

*This incorrectly.

The former is left alone; the latter has an asterisk marking the sentence as a bad example ‐ something to avoid and not repeat.

Is this notation widely adopted? Are there other marks with similar purposes? I have also seen the following denoting a questionable case:

? This would have been maybe debated.

I am interested in the proper usage and formatting of these marks. How should they be spaced? Should they be placed before or after the sentence? If a particular word is in question, should that word get the mark or the entire sentence?

Answer

These are standard in linguistics works. I don't think they are widely used or understood by general readers.

(There are actually two different uses of '*', one marking utterances which would not occur, and the other marking historical words or forms which are reconstructed, not attested; but it is rare that this double use causes any confusion).

I would put the markers immediately before the sentence without a space:

*They wasn't coming

I would occasionally use them to mark an individual word, but normally only when different possibilities are being compared:

They weren't / *wasn't coming

hyphenation - User login or user-login?

I don't have enough reputation to make comments on this site (what a weird system), so I have to make this a question on its own.

I am referencing an answer made to another question about the differences between logged-in and logged in, that is located here: https://english.stackexchange.com/a/11002/127722

The user whose answer was accepted, has written his own example which reads:

the user login was not successful

But isn't that wrong? I thought correct forms would be either:

the user-login was not successful

Or:

user's login was not successful

Which is (are) correct?

Answer

User login is a perfectly normal kind of noun phrase using a noun as a modifier, exactly like user experience or coffee table. You could argue that it is redundant (what other kind of login is there?) but it's perfectly grammatical and idiomatic.

User's login is also grammatical, and has a slightly different meaning, in that it is relating the login to a (particular) user, rather than qualifying the type of login.

I'm not interested in minutiae of punctuation, but I can't see any reason why you should hyphenate the phrase.

american english - Usage of "homework," "schoolwork," and "assignment" in AmEng for schoolwork given to students to do at home

As far as AmEng goes, is there any difference in using either homework, schoolwork, or assignment to call schoolwork given to students to be done at home? Can these be used just about interchangeably?

ASSIGNMENT vs. HOMEWORK

1. assignment

An assignment is a task that someone is given to do, usually as part of their job.

My first major assignment as a reporter was to cover a large-scale riot.

An assignment is also a piece of academic work given to students.

The course has heavy reading assignments.

When class begins, he gives us an assignment and we have seven minutes to work at it.

In American English, an assignment is also a piece of work given to students to do at home. (emphasis is mine.)

2. homework

Work given to schoolchildren to do at home is also called homework.

He never did any homework.

HOUSEWORK vs. HOMEWORK

1. homework

Homework is work that school pupils (Chiefly BrEng)/students (Chiefly AmEng) are given to do at home.

Have you done your English homework?

2. housework

Housework is work such as cleaning or washing that is done in a house.

She relied on him to do most of the housework.

Collins COBUILD English Usage

SCHOOLWORK

: work that is done in classes in a school or given to students to do at home.

Merriam-Webster

EDIT

Point to all of this is, if some native speakers of AmEng actually use exclusively "assignment" (or schoolwork) for "homework" in the sense "schoolwork done at home," wouldn't the reason for that be that "homework" might have a quite different meaning in their vernacular, e.g. "housework" or "work done on the home"?

Homeworker in the US is a person who works on homes or a person who works in homes (maid). It is not a "clear" phrase at all because it tends to have ambiguous or no/multiple meanings. It is certainly something that I would expect to hear from a foreigner in the US. (emphasis is mine.) RyeBread - ELU

Please, consider the following example:

I'll help you with your homework/schoolwork/assignments once I'm done with the housework. (standard AmEng)

-and-

I'll help you with your schoolwork/assignments once I'm done with the homework. (nonstandard regional AmEng?)

Answer

I've always used these terms in a different way that @James McLeod is describing them. Perhaps they are regional differences.

Assignment: One singular task or project; large tasks may be broken up into smaller assignments. I may get one or more assignment per class. Whatever it is, it is thought of as a singular 'unit of work' when submitted or completed.
Complex, multi-part, or really large assignments are generally referred to as projects.

Homework: The collection of all the assignments I have to do at home

Schoolwork: The collection of all the assignments I have to do for school, regardless of the location of where it is done. Can be a synonym for homework, but less frequently used as such.

(Further clarification after reading some comments): An assignment can also be done IN school. Assignment just means 'one task'. Which is why a lot of people do use homework assignment. They're specifying that this assignment is to be done at home (or at least, not during that class)

---

Not sure about other parts of the country, but I have never heard of homework used to describe not-related-to-school work done on or in the home.

Yes, Housework means work done for the house/home. This typically means tasks like cooking, cleaning, laundry, yard work, and small house repairs (when done on one's own home, this term is not used if professionals are called in).

I have never known a native speaker to confuse housework and homework, but if someone learning AmE were to mix the terms up, I do believe they would still be understood by most people.

A word or phrase for what happens after a convergence

I need a word or phrase, and I just can't seem to find the right one ... for when several "trends" converge - after which, everything changes and you cannot go backwards.

This is sort of like, for instance, if an asteroid, meteor, comet and planet were moving along their paths, behaving like an asteroid, meteor, comet and planet - and then somehow collided to form something new - say a white dwarf, or black hole ... that has a completely differet form and behavior. (Don't take me literally about collisions - and especially don't look for scientific accuracy in my example.)

Essentially I am trying to describe where several separate trends/concepts are progressing/advancing, to the point where they converge, and a totally new concept is formed - that isn't merely the sum of the parts. Synergy is not quite the word, because it still implies separate entities working together in unison.

Any suggestions? It doesn't have to be a single word. A phrase (for instance "Tipping Point") is just fine. The fate of my last chapter is in your hands. Thanks!

grammar - Present perfect tense and specific time expression?

According to many grammar textbooks, present perfect tense should not be used with specific time expression. Therefore, it is grammatically wrong to say "I have sold my house on 10 December 2018."
However, I often see this type of sentence in the writings from the United States:
In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and affixed the Official Seal of said City this 26th day of August, 1954.
Questions:
Does the word 'this' make it an exception that 'present perfect tense' can be used with specific time expression in this construction?
or
Is the use of present perfect tense with specific time expression allowed only in American English?

word usage - Proper use of "whom"

Have I used "whom" correctly in the following sentence?
Rarely a day goes by here that I don’t witness this core value manifesting itself in a myriad of thoughtful, sincere, acts of kindness toward our residents, many of whom have enriched our lives beyond measure.

quotations - Punctuation of quoted sentence used as a subject of outer sentence

I know the rules of punctuation when interrupting a sentence of dialogue, but how do you punctuate the end of a quoted sentence which is used as the subject of another sentence?

He picked up after the third ring, and I reported the situation.

“I'll be there with the moving company in half an hour, but I'm sending a team to reinforce the men at your place right now. They should be there in eight minutes [?] ” was his reply.

or

"I know that I know nothing [?]" is a quote attributed to Socrates.

What punctuation mark(s?) should go in place of [?] ? The full stop of the prior sentence? A comma before the consecutive closure? Nothing at all?

grammatical number - What is the difference between a "singular noun" and a "plural noun treated as singular"?

I'd always thought that words like "physics" and "mathematics" were singular: after all, we say "physics is the study of…" etc. But apparently, according to the the comments on this question about "news", each of these words is actually a "plural noun [usually treated as singular]":

(highlighting/ellipsis added by me)
(NOAD = New Oxford American Dictionary)

One, Is this categorization valid? That is, is it correct to say, as the NOAD does, that these words are indeed plural (but treated as singular), rather than to say that they are singular? The accepted answer on that question, by user RegDwigнt, has a different analysis that speaks in terms of “news” being "uncountable", "used with singular verbs", and "etymologically, it used to be a plural form", and thereby carefully avoids addressing this issue, of whether these nouns are indeed plural-treated-as-singular. So my question remains.

Two, If so, what makes these words plural? Is it the fact that they end in s? (Surely "bus" is not plural?) Is it history? (Were they used as plural at some time? How far back in history does one go to decide whether a noun is singular or plural?) Is it the fact that they don't have any distinct forms treated as plural?

Most importantly, why do we even have a grammatical category of "plural nouns treated as singular"? What purpose does it serve, and how are such nouns functionally distinguishable from nouns that are actually singular? When/if the reason is history, is there a rationale for saying "plural nouns treated as singular" rather than "singular nouns that were formerly plural"?

Edit: My question isn't just about "-ics" words, but all words in the category "plural nouns treated as singular" (assuming that the category isn't just -ics words).

Edit 2: The image and part "One" of the question were added later; previously I took for granted that the categorization was valid.

punctuation - I'm confused on the notation. Is the following justified or inconsistent?

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).

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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)

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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.

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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.