I was talking with someone via Facebook. I thought she was wrong, and she wrote back to me: “No, Donna, it is you who are wrong”. Had she left out the word “who” then I believe “are” would be correct, but since she included the word “who” then it changes to singular “you” which would require the word “is”. I believe it shoud read “No, Donna, it is you who is wrong”. Please help me on this grammatical issue.
It is you who are/is …
July 24th, 2010 by Donna HansenHe and I, me and him
July 22nd, 2010 by Alan TI know that the proper order for a nominative series of nouns including the speaker is “John and I,” but what about for the objective? “Mrs. Smith taught me and John,” or, “Mrs. Smith taught John and me”? The same goes for prepositions, “Mrs. Smith taught chemistry to me and John,” vs. “Mrs. Smith taught chemistry to John and me.”
Also, does whether one uses the objective pronoun or the reflexive pronoun affect the order? “I taught John and myself,” vs, “I taught myself and John.”
Really happy or real happy
July 21st, 2010 by DeMistyI think when used as an adverb or adjective, the word should be really, as in “She is really happy.” Real is equivalent to true, or genuine, or actual whereas really is equivalent to the word very.
Is it correct to use real as an adverb or adjective in this way?
Plural of Yes
July 20th, 2010 by BarnesHow do I correctly write YES as a plural. Example: # of Yes’s.
Team names — singular or plural
July 20th, 2010 by mikeWatching the World Cup recently has prompted me to ask: Why do the announcers refer to teams as if they are plural? For instance, “England are on the attack.” I think it should be “England is on the attack,” as we are referring to the English team which is a single unit and therefore singular?
“Anglish”
July 14th, 2010 by Shaun CHas anyone come across “Anglish”? Anglish or Saxon is described as “…a form of English linguistic purism, which favours words of native (Germanic) origin over those of foreign (mainly Romance and Greek) origin.”
Does anybody have an opinion or thoughts on “Anglish”…
Oh it’s… “Free”?
June 28th, 2010 by Devin D.While on vacation during the first week of summer, I came across an advertisement for the H1N1 Vaccine on the back of a coach bus. It stated “Get your ‘free’ H1N1 vaccine today!”
This begs the question, does putting quotation marks around “Free” (but not as a quotation, of course) serve any function or purpose? Such as:
All these hot dogs are “free”.
Origin of insincere “oh wait”
June 27th, 2010 by DanI’ve noticed the phrase “oh wait” being used insincerely/sarcastically, to make a point. For example: “DOW 10,000!!!! Oh Wait, Make That 7,537.”
What is the origin of this sort of usage of “oh wait”?
The following is… vs. Following is…
June 23rd, 2010 by Debbie DIn the interest of being concise, is it acceptable to use “Following is a complete list of tags…” instead of “The following is a complete list of tags…”
“she” vs “her”
June 19th, 2010 by Elizabeth IngramI was speaking to my administrator and explaining how I met another person in our company. I said “her and I traveled to Kansas together”. She stopped me and said it should be “she and I traveled to Kansas together”. I feel both were appropriate, but she disagreed. Could we both be correct?
Teaching English to Preschoolers with iPhones
We (i.e. the creators of Pain in The English) developed a series of iPhone apps to teach preschool kids how to recognize letters and words. (My wife developed the characters and I did the coding.) Our own 4-year old daughter has been enjoying them. They are now available on Apple's App Store. You can search for "bitskis" on your iPhone, or visit the official website at bitskis.com.
If you have kids and own an iPhone, please check it out. It's $2.
