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 this letter, we describe a practical method for sense tagging of Korean unit words in nominal compounds.”
In the above sentence, I’m curious if “sense tagging of” requires an article, as in “the sense tagging of”. Because of the “of” after “tagging” my instincts say yes, an article is necessary. But am I just adding unnecessary clutter into the sentence?
Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks!
Why do Americans not use a preposition when talking about days of the week? “We’ll meet Monday” has an “on” “before” “after” or “during” missing. You can’t meet Monday unless it is a person or a thing; as it is a unit of time there should be a preposition; One doesn’t “meet 4 o’clock” but one may “meet at 4 o’clock” and so you do “not meet Monday” but “on Monday”.
“Some people may have doubt that why invest in these sectors during the economy slump?”
Is the above phrase grammatically correct?
Is it grammatically correct to use ‘doubt that’ when the ‘doubt’ is a NOUN?
For example: 1) VERB: I doubt that Fred has really lost 25 pounds ... 2) NOUN: Some people may have doubts that .....
“May you please send me the...” Is this correct? It doesn’t sound right. I believe this person is using the same logic as asking permission to do something. Wouldn’t ” Will you please send me the...” or “Would you please...” be correct?
Does the acronym ITS (Information Technology Services) take a singular verb or plural i.e.,
ITS is thinking of redoing the website.
ITS are thinking of redoing the website.
Since the last word is plural, wouldn’t it make sense to make the verb plural, even though it doesn’t sound good?
Would you write ‘four day’s journey’ or ‘four days journey’?
I am having a tussle with a sub. I know it’s ‘Long Day’s Journey into Night’ but surely the journey doesn’t belong to the four days, so it should be ‘four days journey’ - and presumably ‘a four-day journey’ would be even better?
What do you think?
Is the following phrase using correct grammar, why or why not? And how would you describe this phrase? It’s just weird to me:
“Hey, you’re that goofy kid Sandra makes do crazy stuff!!”
Basically Sandra makes this kid do goofy stuff and someone has spotted him, did they use correct grammar?
It just sounds weird to me, especially the “make do” part. Whether this is grammatically correct, what are the grammatical rules that would apply to a phrase like this? Thanks so much!
When I was in my linguistics class in college, my prof said using the verb be in this context was actually more grammatically correct than when we say “He calls me up all the time,” or “He’s always calling me,” etc. I can’t find my notes or any other info...can someone give an explanation? Thank you!
How much space should be given after a period in Word documents and in PDF’s?
It seems like I’m seeing, more and more, “believe” and similar words being used as nouns. At first I thought that it was an ESL issue; perhaps in other languages, the same word is used for both “believe” and “belief”. But that explanation is looking less and less plausible. Is it just me, or are other people baffled by this? I don’t understand how any native speaker can confuse the two words. Perhaps there are accents in which they are pronounced the same?
