grammatical number - Apostrophe in “beginners guide”

In the phrase beginners guide to …, where should the apostrophe go?

1. Beginner’s Guide to […]


2. Beginners’ Guide to […]

In my particular case, this is the title for a presentation so there are multiple beginners that are being addressed.

Answer

If your intention is to address each member of the audience directly, I suggest you prefix the phrase with an appropriate article, as in:

A Beginner's Guide to Shoe Hurling

or

The Beginner's Guide to Shoe Hurling

The use of the apostrophe before s seems more apt in this context.

Although:

Beginners' Guide to Shoe Hurling

is also grammatically correct, but would make your presentation sound impersonal.

Why are some first names always abbreviated and some not?

Is there any consistent rule or at least an explanation why in some names the first name(s) are traditionally nearly always abbreviated and in some are not?

Why, for example, T.S. Eliot but Thomas Wiseman,

or H.G. Wells and not Herbert Wells;

Charles Dickens and not C.G. Dickens or something?

Obviously, both forms must be correct, but in practice only one or another appears for a particular name in writing. And it mustn't be the first name that affects it, as the first example demonstrates... (And let's stick to real names, as opposed to pen names, which can be anything).

grammar - Which is correct: "The facts are known by us" or "The facts are known to us"?

Which is correct?

The facts are known by us

or

The facts are known to us

I think by is correct but my friends persist that it's to.

Inversion - Sentence starting with rarely

This is from my English Cambridge Proficiency Book. In Unit 8 about inversions, I had to rewrite the sentence:

Original sentence:

It is very difficult for town centre redevelopment to achieve a harmonious balance between old and new

My answer:

Rarely is it easy for town centre redevelopment to achieve a harmonious balance between old and new

Correct question (according to the book):

Rarely do/will/can town centre redevelopments achieve a harmonious balance between old and new.

I wonder why my answer isn't acceptable.

Is there anything fundamentally wrong with my sentence?

Thanks

grammar - Whether you need the word 'to' in the sentence - Which place do you want to go to?

Which sentence is correct and why?

1. Which do you want to go to?


2. Which do you want to go?

I am a native English speaker and was asked this by a Japanese person. I think number 2 is not correct but I don't know the reason why, or if in fact I am actually right.

Thanks!

Correct use of "whom"

It is something in this sentence, which does not seem correct to me. Maybe the way I use whom?

We use 70% of the data to estimate the probability of default of the remaining 30% of the data. In addition, we use the model in Section 5 to generate the latent space of the clients to whom we estimated the probability of default. <

Answer

Your use is correct, though old fashioned.

To use whom correctly:
Say "to him, to her, to them". Use to whom.

To correctly switch to who:
Say "He is, she is, they are". Use who is.
Or, anytime you don't want to use the nearly archaic whom.

The problem you're seeing may be "clients TO whom". Judging from the rest of your sentence, it looks like you "estimated for" them, unless statistics related grammar requires the "to".

tenses - Is choice of verb form or construction determined by context or by a sentence's internal structure?

I'm trying to understand the concept behind the correct usage of tenses. Should I choose the correct tense based on the context or is it strictly constrained to the text within the sentence?

For example I have a phrase like this:

Within a year before the renovation, a total of 10,000 people had
visited the museum, and the majority had voiced dissatisfaction
with their experience.

So basically I'm describing an action 10,000 people had visited the museum which is taking place before the certain event renovation.

Now. I want to add a bit more clarification to this idea and write something like this:

During this time, 40% of the museum guests voiced their dissatisfaction with the
experience.

Now this sentence is in Simple Paste tense, but is it correct? I mean, the overall context is in Past Perfect Simple, as stated by the previous sentence. So should the second be in Past Perfect Simple as well, if it's following the first one as part of the same paragraph?