Proofreading Service - Pain in the English
Proofreading Service - Pain in the English

Your Pain Is Our Pleasure

24-Hour Proofreading Service—We proofread your Google Docs or Microsoft Word files. We hate grammatical errors with a passion. Learn More

Proofreading Service - Pain in the English
Proofreading Service - Pain in the English

Your Pain Is Our Pleasure

24-Hour Proofreading Service—We proofread your Google Docs or Microsoft Word files. We hate grammatical errors with a passion. Learn More

Username

ucla74

Member Since

December 11, 2009

Total number of comments

10

Total number of votes received

52

Bio

Latest Comments

anything vs. everything

  • August 5, 2010, 12:52pm

Well, it depends on the context. "Anything" can be exclusive: John is so out of his element in the kitchen: He can never find anything.

Contrast that with "John is so out of his element in the kitchen: He can never find everything."

The second version is a completely different meaning from the first; and in fact, the way the sentence is written, doesn't make a lot of sense.

Putting it another way, "anything" and "everything" are not synonymous, in any way.

Myriad / myriad of

  • July 28, 2010, 11:06pm

"A 10,000 of apples" is indeed poor English; however, as was pointed out, the original meaning of "myriad" was 10,000. That's no longer the common meaning. Thus, "a myriad apples" and "a myriad of apples" are both correct. Normally, though, when we're counting apples, we use pounds, kilograms, bushels, or simply, "a lot" to describe a large number.

It is you who are/is ...

  • July 24, 2010, 11:18pm

The pronoun "you" always takes a plural verb, even when the object is singular, as in your example.

Leave out the "who" and you'd have either "you are wrong" or "you is wrong". "Who," in your example, modifies "you." It's neither the subject ("you" is the subject--and there's an example of an exception to the rule I stated initially, but that's because what I'm really saying is "The word {fill in the blank} is the subject") nor the object of the verb "to be."

Hope this helps!

Team names — singular or plural

  • July 20, 2010, 6:01pm

The link above is somewhat helpful, but doesn't address the question specifically. In the UK (and other English-speaking countries outside North America), just about all collective nouns (e.g., team, or the name of a team, such as "England") take plural verbs. Hence, "England were playing generally lousy football." If you listen to Versus Network's Tour de France coverage, you'll hear things such as "The Radio Shack team are led by Lance Armstrong," since the announcers are again British.

In either case the verb for should be "...has surprised us." However, here's how I'd write the sentence for clarity and concisesness:

"His selection as headmaster surprised us."

Myriad / myriad of

  • March 1, 2010, 12:55pm

dyske is correct: "Myriad" is both a noun (with a much older history) and an adjective. Originally, "myriad" meant ten thousand; its second meaning is "a great many," hence "a myriad of [something]."

As an adjective it means "innumerable": John had myriad reasons for not finishing his homework, all of them plausible.

me vs. myself

  • December 28, 2009, 2:24pm

Douglas pretty much nailed it. The reflexive "myself" is almost always incorrect, unless it is preceded somewhere in the sentence by the objective "me."

I'm afraid the editor to whom you made your pitch was probably negatively impressed. Writing is not speech, especially formal writing. (And even in speech, making a statement with a rising intonation is affective, and quite off-putting to many.)

If you want to ask a question, ask a question. Don't force your reader to guess at your intent, and don't leave your skills and knowledge open to question, as in "Does this person really know how to write?"

decapitalize vs. uncapitalize

  • December 16, 2009, 1:04pm

In fact, according to Merriam-Webster's 3rd Unabridged, neither is a verb, although "uncapitalized" is an adjective. Try "change to lower case." That's what copyeditors do with a stroke through the improper capital and "lc" in the margin.

Twenty-ten vs Two thousand-ten

  • December 11, 2009, 7:10pm

Thought we had this discussion here; perhaps it was elsewhere.

At any rate: My theory is, people use whichever form has the fewer number of syllables. Thus, "twenty-ten" (3 syllables) over "two-thousand ten" (4).

Two-thousand one and twenty-oh-one each have 4; two-thousand'n'one is really close to four (no one says "two thousand AND one").