For example, is
All I had to do was step out of my comfort zone, or in this case, be pushed out of it.
or
All I had to do was step out of my comfort zone or in this case, be pushed out of it.
preferable? I think I know which one to use, but I would like to know why I would use it.
Choose the correct pronoun to complete the sentence.
No other boy in our neighborhood runs as fast as (he, him).
Choose the correct pronoun to complete the sentence.
Who could make spaghetti better than (she, her)?
Choose the correct pronoun to complete the sentence.
The book about the history of pencils was more interesting to you than to (he, him).
I am a junior in sales office. I have not been here long. A senior colleague of mine will often ask me to read correspondence that he has drafted. On the whole it is an easy task requiring not much skill.
However he has sometimes structured his query asking if I may read his correspondence using this statement -
' you won't want to read that for me, will you ? '
I do read it but it irks me immensely that he poses his query this way but I cannot quite understand why this particular sentence structure irks me so much. I should tell him to go to hell but junior and all that...
I would appreciate some thoughts please.
Thank you.
Is this correct use of a semicolon? The clauses do seem to stand on their own but are related, so I would say "yes", but something about the sentence seems off about it to me. Does something about "in this way" invalidate the semicolon?
In such cases, it is possible to use "groups" so that the engine can
be shared with other copies of the application; in this way, the engine
can be in use at all times.
Answer
Typically the semicolon is used to separate two independent clauses without the use of a conjunction. That much you probably know. In my experience (and this is strictly my opinion, but one couched in years of professional writing), the semicolon serves as a temporal marker — a pause more significant than a comma but not as pronounced as a period. I tend to view it like a fermata in musical notation — it serves a purpose in expressing the rhythm of the sentence as it is to be spoken. It is, to me, an almost purely stylistic marker.
And by the way, you should always read your writing out loud. Doing so can reveal all sorts of poor constructions.
That said, the phrase "in this way" does not invalidate the semicolon in any technical sense. Would I use a semicolon there? No, I wouldn't. But only because to me it feels like there is a full stop between the two clauses. They are related by virtue of being in the same paragraph; they don't need any further help connecting.
Would it be acceptable to replace the emphasized (genitive) construction in the following sentence
"The photographer Terry Richardson, after being accused in one documentary of sexual assault of female models, continued to work for major fashion brands until reporting on the producer Harvey Weinstein changed the landscape"
with the following (accusative) construction "sexually assaulting female models"?
Should "of" be used only in expressions such as "application of these concepts to..." while not in those such as "applying these concepts to..."? Is it correct that -ing form is generally not used in constructions such as the on in the first example ("applying of these concepts"). Is it just a matter of style?
Should it be "abandoning this paradigm calls for rethinking the concept of..." or "abandoning this paradigm calls for rethinking of the concept of..."?
I understand that English is an analytic language which has almost entirely abandoned its inflectional morphology and case system; my reference to dative/accusative cases is thus merely to indicate how I'm trying to explain this to myself.
I've just received a memo which says (effectively)
As more people leave, there will be less people available.
I want that word to be fewer. Are there guidelines for which word ought to be used when?
I was answering something on Super User and wrote OSes as part of my normal flow without really thinking about it. On a re-read I decided that it didn't look right, so I changed it to OSs, which still felt incorrect. I also considered OS's, but that didn't feel right either, so I thought I'd ask on here.
In this specific case, what is the written plural form for OS?
The intention is to mean multiple Operating Systems.
And, is there a general rule for the plural form of an initialism that ends with the letter S?
Answer
A search on Google for OSes returns results from several established websites such as infoworld.com, osnews.com and linux.com, which suggests OSes is the accepted form.