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

porsche

Member Since

October 20, 2005

Total number of comments

670

Total number of votes received

3091

Bio

Latest Comments

Eels’ or Eels’s?

  • October 27, 2005, 4:47pm

Oops. Sorry, that last "Anonymous" was me, Porsche.

Riot act

  • October 27, 2005, 3:19pm

Wow, thanks! Another dead metaphor to add to my collection.

Tsunami

  • October 26, 2005, 7:53pm

Actually, susan, me, a tidal wave IS a tsunami, at least one of the definitions. It may be a misnomer, but that is the definition. Yes, a tidal wave may have nothing to do with tides.

you all

  • October 26, 2005, 7:36pm

All sounds interesting, but I have to take issue with your basic premise. Most Americans do NOT say you all, or y'all. It is specifically a southern regionalism.

“by” vs. “of”

  • October 26, 2005, 7:30pm

Of couse it is of, not by. You're the one who possesses the qualities. The qualities aren't possessing YOU. Unless, like Charlie says, it's something scary, like in the amityville horror or something.

percentages

  • October 26, 2005, 7:00pm

For those who don't like "two-thirds percent", what are you talking about??? People talk like that all the time. My bank account yields four and a half percent, or three and a quarter, not 4.5 or 3.25. Normal people just don't talk like that. Really now.
Oh, and if you do want to express the repeating decimal, as in 66.66 "repeating" percent, you would simply draw a line above the last 6 to signify the repeat. Here's a great bit of trivia. The line is called a "vinculum".
As for style, if you don't indicate the repetition, then it would be 66.67%, not 66.66%. Always round up if the digit beyond the last shown is 5 or greater.

Left and Right?

  • October 26, 2005, 5:38pm

In French, left is gauche, also meaning awkward or lacking social polish. Personally, I like Ralph and Louie, as in "hang a louie ovuh dere"

Odd sentence?

  • October 26, 2005, 5:31pm

Wait a minute, now. While it is certainly likely the the true intent was to use "broke", it is not ungrammatical with "breaking". Consider this scenario: The bottle was sitting on a table for years and years, unmolested. Then, all of a sudden, without any explanation, a crack developed on the mouth of the bottle. The crack grew and grew over the course of many hours, even spawning new cracks. Eventually, the bottle was so badly damaged that it flew apart into a million pieces, each piece developing its own cracks. Couldn't this situation be accurately described by the sample sentence?

Past tense of “text”

  • October 26, 2005, 5:22pm

I'm with you, Slemmet, but this happens to be one of my wife's pet peeves. She hates hearing that olympic atheletes "medal" in a particular sport. In fact, when a noun is made into a verb, she says that they "verbed a noun". See? She does it too! Personally, I love it. I think it's the dynamic nature of the language (although I do try not to use "interface" as a verb. It's such a corporate non-speak buzzword.)

The double “to”

  • October 26, 2005, 4:48pm

Edward, Jamaal, David, you have all hit on one of my pet peeves. You are all incorrect. Ending a sentence with a preposition is completely 100% grammatically correct. Every single grammar book in America (and the UK) says so. It may be considered a weaker form, but it is not ungrammatical. In modern English, "...the store to which I go..." is certainly correct (notice I did not say "more" correct), but is also considered somewhat stilted and overly formal, especially in spoken English.