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.

Username

dms726

Member Since

June 17, 2009

Total number of comments

3

Total number of votes received

20

Bio

Latest Comments

Someone else’s

  • June 17, 2009, 2:47pm

One small note: "passerby" and "passersby" do not have hyphens (according to Webster's dictionary)

As of

  • June 17, 2009, 2:44pm

According to Webster's Dictionary, "as of" is a preposition "used to indicate a time or date at which something begins or ends"; "takes effect as of July 1" is the example given.

Matt, I am not sure I have ever heard "as at" used in the manner you describe.

Plural of “insurance”?

  • June 17, 2009, 2:35pm

Insurance is indeed noncountable, but "insurances" is being used in the provided example ("we accept all major insurances") to indicate different companies rather than a plural of "insurance" (a more correct wording might be "we accept insurance from all major insurance companies," but that gets rather cumbersome). When speaking of multiples of insurance, one correct way to refer to them would be "We have several types of insurance, including health, fire, auto, and boat."