Pain in the English
Pain in the English

Unpacking English, Bit by Bit

A community for questioning, nitpicking, and debating the quirks and rules of the English language.

Pain in the English
Pain in the English

Unpacking English, Bit by Bit

A community for questioning, nitpicking, and debating the quirks and rules of the English language.

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We’ve officially closed our proofreading services. You can probably guess why. With AI tools like ChatGPT now doing the job for free (and instantly), the demand for human proofreaders has all but vanished. If you still prefer a human touch, you're part of a rare—and shrinking—breed. We're now back to our roots: a forum for nitpicking the finer points of the English language. Thanks for your past support. We appreciate it.

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Latest Posts : Misc

I thought you could put /s/ on a copy of a signed letter to indicate the original had been signed. Right or wrong?

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Can anyone tell me why the second ‘a’ in Canada and Canadian is pronounced differently? 

I’m English/British and I and from England/Britain.

Surely it should either be Can-a-da & Can-a-dian or Can-ay-da & Can-ay-dian...

My guess is it has something to do with the French influence, but I would love to know for sure.

Here in the UK our language has been heavily influenced over the years, including by the French and it has always interested where these things start or change.

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I was in empty space in an elevator one day when it occurred to me that it’s actually “pains-taking”, the taking of pains to do something thoroughly. I’d never thought about it before.

But it’s too hard to pronounce “painz-taking”, because the “z” sound must be voiced; whereas the unvoiced “s” combines easily with the “t” to make “-staking”, so that’s what we say. That’s my theory, but BrE might be different. Is it?

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Why does the Western media have so many different spellings for some Arabic terms?

eg:

1. hezbollah hesbollah hizbullah hizbollah hisbollah

2. ayatollah ayatullah

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I’m having a custom item made to indicate when our home was established.  The year will be the year my husband and I were married and started our family.  My issue is I’m not sure how our name should appear.  Here is the text.

The (LAST NAME)

Est. 2008

Our last name is Myers.  Please help!  I’m not sure if it should be possessive (ownership of the home/family) or plural (for the people).

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At the clinic I was directed to the “subwait area” and left to ponder my fate. I did wonder whether this should be sub-wait and how fully portable “sub” has become as a preposition and/or prefix, when attached to a Germanic-rooted word. What other words are there where “sub” is used as an English word, apart from phrases like “sub judice” and “sub” as a short form of “substitute” eg in sport “he was subbed off”?

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Can you please comment on a trend that I have noticed recently. More and more people seem to be pronouncing words that contain the letters “str” as if they were written “shtr”. Strong sounds like shtrong, strange sounds like shtrange, and so on. I have noticed even my favorite NPR journalists mispronouncing these words. I first noticed this pronunciation in one of Michelle Obama’s early speeches. I’d appreciate any insight that you might have.

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I have always believed, probably in common with most Scots, that the pronunciation of “gill” varies depending on whether one is referring to the organ of respiration in fishes and other water-breathing animals ( /ɡɪl/ ), or a measure of liquid (/dʒɪl/ ), or even one of the many other variations of the word. I was therefore somewhat surprised recently when watching an episode of QI to hear the erstwhile Stephen Fry and his guests use /ɡɪl/ for both the fishy organ and the liquid measure..

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Does anyone know if there are rules governing the pronunciation of “a”? It’s either “AYE” or “UH”, depending on the word following. My preference is dictated by how it sounds and how it flows off the tongue, but I have never been able to establish if actual rules exist.

Americans and Australians tend to use “AYE” all the time and sometime it just sounds ridiculous, like...”Aye man driving aye car stopped at aye traffic light”

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What diacritic would I use over the word YANA to accent the first a as an “ah” (short o) sound. It is pronounced Yahna. Thanks!

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Latest Comments

I will go home.

Your analysis of home as an adverbial modifier rather than a direct object is spot on. In the sentence "I will go home," home functions as an adverb of place, modifying the intransitive verb go. This contrasts with noun phrases like the beach, which require a preposition (e.g., go to the beach).

Interestingly, home belongs to a special category of place-related words that can function adverbially without to, similar to abroad, downtown, or overseas. This pattern has historical roots in Old and Middle English, where certain location words developed an adverbial sense. That’s why we say "go home" but "go to the park"—not due to simple elision of to, but because home inherently carries an adverbial function.

“by the time”

If I look at this sentence: "By the time he arrived, the lesson had finished". I wonder if it would be enough just to say "the lesson finished", as the time expression of "by the time" seems to clearly indicate what happened first. Am I right or is it 100% necessary to use Past Perfect with the expression?

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gifting vs. giving a gift

  • JillG
  • February 2, 2025, 7:53pm

Thank goodness somebody else has spotted the difference! The current fashionable usage "gifting" drives me mad. Gifting is something like donating your house to the National Trust. If you hand over a birthday present you are giving it. Gifting implies a certain degree of grandness and selfless generosity.

Screw The Pooch

"Screw The Pooch" means to avoid work, basically the job of an enjineer, work being enerjy or time expenditure. For example, computers use very little enerjy these days compared to an ENIAC (ancient computer -- very expensive to operate). They are also composed of transistors so numerous, clock speeds so high, that artificial intelligence, starting with grammar checkers and automated graphic artists, and ending in no way.

Warsaw Will Dec-30-2012
"@Hairy Scot - Hi. I don't think "different to" falls into your PS category, as it's pretty old. It seems in fact to be an older usage (1520) than "different from" (which is first attested to in Shakespeare)"

I have searched all of my Shakespeare collection and I can find no examples of "different to".

Great question, Susan! In full capital case, superscript letters and abbreviations like Jr. should ideally remain in all caps for consistency. However, small caps can be a good choice for abbreviations like "Jr." to keep the text legible and balanced with the rest of the name.

For instance:

JANE MCDONALD (with the superscript letter in normal caps)
WILLIAM DOE, JR. (keeping Jr. in all caps or using small caps for a more refined look).
This way, you maintain uniformity while also giving a slight differentiation to the abbreviations for readability.

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“My” works better here since “mine” is a standalone possessive. The sentence should read: “I so appreciate you taking my and Gregg’s child to school today.”

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