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

3088

Bio

Latest Comments

“get in contact”

  • September 24, 2012, 12:56pm

Joelackey92, I would suggest that "get in contact" does not mean that you never were in contact to begin with; it simply means that you are not currently in contact. You may have been in contact before, but have since lost contact.

Substantial vs. substantive

  • September 16, 2012, 8:00pm

Curriculae, Cassie? Curricula is already plural, the plural of curriculum.

“It is what it is”

  • August 27, 2012, 1:44pm

I am curious. For those of you who seem to have an issue with this, what about the old and familiar saying, "what's done is done"? Surely the meaning of this adage is clear, yes? If you think about it, they mean almost the same thing. "...Done...done" is the action-verb version; "...is...is" is the state-of-being version.

No Jasper, born and bred in New York, US of A.

Pet names and capitalization.

  • August 15, 2012, 9:11am

Same with mom and dad, etc., they're capitalized as "names", but not when describing family position.

With capital: "let me ask Dad",

Without capital: "let me ask my dad".

Actually, providencejim, when I was in school (loooong ago), I was taught that "but" also should always be preceded by a semicolon and followed by a comma. Times have changed though. No one does this any more with "but". Surely you've noticed the recent trend, even according to authoritative style guides, to simplify and/or eliminate punctuation as much as possible?

Also, irregular plurals, irregular verbs, etc., are usually [always?] ancient words whose forms have been passed down for generations, possibly from our language's early origins. New words rarely [never?] use irregular forms for their prototypes.

Goofy, allow me to take up the gauntlet on your behalf. Frank35, in "we saw some sheep", the word "sheep" is an irregular plural. On the other hand, in "we have some LEGO", the word LEGO is not plural at all. It is a mass noun, and is still singular. Thus, your analogy doesn't hold up.

Even if it did, it would still be irrelevant. There are a few nonstandard plurals like sheep, moose, fish, deer, etc., but there are many, many more that are standard: car/cars, house/houses, sock/socks, etc. The existence of a few nonstandard plurals has nothing to do with how other words should be pluralized. Are you suggesting that pluralizing by adding -s should be completely eliminated from the English language? If not, then what's your point exactly?

Do note, I'm not debating the correctness of "legos" as a plural (for now). I'm simply addressing your "sheep" comment.

Do you really mean the French 'u'? the French 'u' doesn't really sound quite like 'oo' (as in fool or drool). I don't think the French 'u' phoneme really exists in any dialect of English that I'm aware of. The French 'u' sound is produced by forming the 'oo' sound with the lips, but forming the 'ee' sound with the tongue, etc., inside the mouth. It's not just an 'oo' sound.

Latest vs. Newest

  • July 18, 2012, 11:38am

D A Wood, the word "latest" means "the most recent". The word "late" has quite a number of definitions, including recent. Why are you cherry-picking your definitions? In any case, in no way could "latest" mean, er, "most recently deceased"? Or, er, "deadest"?