Discussion Forum
This is a forum to discuss the gray areas of the English language for which you would not find answers easily in dictionaries or other reference books.
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Latest Posts : Grammar
In a compelte sentence, you need a Subject and a Predicate. But what about the sentences that are, “Okay.”, “Yes/No/Maybe”, “Hello.” etc. Are they considered a Complete Sentence or thought?
I often come across this construction:
verb + ‘off’ + ‘of’ + object
I’ve never really heard it in spoken English and wonder if you can say the same without ‘of’.
Just one example here from EFL Geek:
... just to get it OFF OF my hands since I wasn’t using it anymore.
I’m no English expert so this one is probably obvious to all of you. In some places in the Caribbean, the people do not “fill” up a gas tank. They “full” it. As in “Full up my gas tank”. I’m not sure if this is wrong. It’s like saying in the imperative, “Make my gas tank full!” Well, is it wrong?
Actually there are a few idioms in the Caribbean like this. “How comes you doesn’t call?” I’m not sure about the “comes” in that sentence.
When should I use “farther” as opposed to “further”? ex. I went farther down the road than I expected. I went further down the road than I expected.
Is ‘off the mark’ a proper english?
“My earlier calculation on the number of slides is off the mark. I have just added on department of building & the current total is 97. I still haven’t receive department of Real Estate which would be another 17 slides. The total will be around 120 slides.”
Is there any reason for the “that” in the following sentence?
I thought that the day was warm. vs. I thought the day was warm.
It comes up every now and then and really looks crazy if you dont work around it in some way.
“Home Depot is the store I go to to buy screws”
Is that sentence just completely wrong or completely normal and just looks funny?
Is the usage of “at anytime” in a sentence has the same connotation as “anytime”?
“You can remove any user from your chat environment at anytime”
“You can remove any user from your chat environment anytime.”
I was taught that biweekly and bimonthly meant twice a week and twice a month, respectively. I can even reference this in my very old dictiionaries as being correct. I now see definitions in dictionaries that define biweekly as twice a week AND every other week (Random House, Webster’s), and bimonthly as every other month. These “new” definitions are also used in every-day conversation, and can be confusing (I now have reverted to twice a week or every other week to clarify). When did this change? If biannually is always twice a year, why are not bimonthly and biweekly twice a month and twice a week?
Anything odd about this sentence?
“All of a sudden, there was a bottle breaking on the table.”
