tenses - Difference between "I reached home" and "I have reached home"

I often confuse these two things:
"I reached home" and "I have reached home".
Once my friend asked me, "Where are you? "
I messaged him: "I have reached home".
He told me not to use "have reached "...

reached = past tense, have reached = present perfect

Can someone please clear this doubt so that I don't make the mistake again.

Answer

If you were texting the message as you were getting home, or just after arriving home than it should be:
"I've reached home."
You use the present perfect because the time of the action is not specified and the important information is that your journey's over and you are now at home.

If you specified a time then you'd have had to use the preterite:
"I reached home a couple of minutes ago (at 10...)."
Or if you were in a sequence of events, e.g :
"I reached home and had somethingto eat."

What rules govern the omission of the subject in non-finite clauses?

In non-finite clauses

the verb must be in a non-finite form (such as an infinitive,
participle, gerund or gerundive), and it is consequently much more
likely that there will be no subject expressed, i.e. that the clause
will consist of a (non-finite) verb phrase on its own.

What rules govern the omission of the subject?

What about in the following, can the phrase ever be a clause?

• could be important

I think so because "be" is the bare infinitive, so the verb is non-finite.

pronouns - "He and I", "Him and me"

Somebody taught me a rule of thumb how to discern if I should use "I" or "Me" when adding self to the end of a list of people in a sentence: Ignore the list, strip the rest and treat it only as if it was the singular "me", choose one that matches.

Still, often I see things like John and me went to the park. Is this just a common error or are there some specific rules where I will be replaced by me if appearing on a list?

Answer

Standard English requires I in subject position, producing John and I went to the park. Other dialects, however, allow me in subject position when the pronoun is coordinated with a noun or another pronoun. That is why you will see, or more likely hear, John and me went to the park.

grammaticality - Can I end a sentence with "on"?

Does this sentence make sense "I would like to propose forming a partnership where we work together to provide optimal service to the new developments you are building, or have already started construction on."

possessive form of nouns ending in "x"

Where a noun ends with the letter x, is it proper for the possessive form of the word to end with 's or simply ' ?

Example 1:

"It is Xerox' position that it owns the patent."

vs.

"It is Xerox's position that it owns the patent."

Example 2:

"The ox's tail was short."

vs.

"The ox' tail was short."

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

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

Answer

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

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


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



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

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

• in years 1939–1945


• pages 31–32 may be relevant


• New York beat Los Angeles 98–95


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

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

• pro-American


• cruelty-free eggs


• em-dash


• it's pronounced hos-pi-tal-it-tee


• Olivia Newton-John

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

• 4 − 2 = 2.

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

Figure dash

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

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

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

grammatical number - Is the word "data" now considered singular? If so, what about "datum"?

I know that the singular of data is datum. I know that data is a plural.

However, common usage of the word "data" suggests it is used as a "collection of data".

Here is [the collection of] data.

In which case, is the word data now a singular again, or still the plural? If so, what is the correct use of the word data and datum now?

Answer

There are two conflicting usages. For example, a Google search for "the data suggest" returns 10,000,000 results, but a search for "the data suggests" still returns almost 2,000,000 hits.

Wiktionary says:

data uncountable or plural noun
1. Plural form of datum: pieces of information.
2. (uncountable, collectively) information.
3. A collection of object-units that are distinct from one another.

Usage notes

This word is more often used as an uncountable noun with a singular verb than as a plural noun, with singular datum.

Merriam-Webster says:

Definition

1: factual information (as measurements or statistics) used as a basis for reasoning, discussion, or calculation is plentiful and easily available — H. A. Gleason, Jr.> have been published — N. H. Jacoby>

[...]

Usage Discussion

Data leads a life of its own quite independent of datum, of which it was originally the plural. It occurs in two constructions: as a plural noun (like earnings), taking a plural verb and plural modifiers (as these, many, a few) but not cardinal numbers, and serving as a referent for plural pronouns; and as an abstract mass noun (like information), taking a singular verb and singular modifiers (as this, much, little), and being referred to by a singular pronoun. Both constructions are standard. The plural construction is more common in print, perhaps because the house style of some publishers mandates it.

Emphasis mine.