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

Warsaw Will

Member Since

December 3, 2010

Total number of comments

1371

Total number of votes received

2086

Bio

I'm a TEFL teacher working in Poland. I have a blog - Random Idea English - where I do some grammar stuff for advanced students and have the occasional rant against pedantry.

Latest Comments

cannot vs. can not

  • January 8, 2014, 4:12pm

Well nigh impossible, but not completely:

"Can't it wait until tomorrow?" Jake yawned
"You can not go if you don't want to." Finn shrugged and left the house

From a piece of fan fiction (with some nice pictures) at http://www.deviantart.com/morelikethis/artists/371275254?view_mode=2

From more fan fiction, but I think not by a native speaker:

"We can not do it if you don't want to!" "Ani, lets do it." My competitive spirit rised up. "Sure." He smiled cheerfully. "We'll try the competition please." "Okay!"

(on SEO - to someone who had created a lot of keywords) "first of all, you can not make so many keywords, you need to focus on some of them."

"he will get pissed whenever I ask if he can not spend so much time on the computer,"
This is quite a good one - constructions like 'Can you not make so much noise' are quite common, but less so without the intervening pronoun - could not is more common (being reported speech).

Incidentally:
"can not do it if you don't want" gets only 1 hit on Google
"can not go if you don't want" -gets 4, but one of them is this page and two are obviously written by non-native speakers

cannot vs. can not

  • January 8, 2014, 3:40pm

@Thredder -There is a theoretically possible difference yes, as in 'I can not go, you know. I don't have to.' But trying to find examples in real life is nigh on impossible. The vast majority of times that can not is used it has exactly the same meaning as cannot (see quote from Oxford Dictionaries in my November 12, 2012 comment).

Incidentally, I've just noticed a comment by Mr Eugene from November 11, 2012 which neatly and wittily shows another difference of use:

'I cannot believe I found a blog about the words "cannot" and "can not" , this can not be happening....lol.'

'cannot' for unstressed, and 'can not' when we really want to stress 'not'.

You’ve got another think/thing coming

  • January 8, 2014, 3:24pm

@Traduttore - Sure, leave out all the spaces, plus signs etc. Look forward to hearing from you:

will + dot + randomidea + at sign + gmail + dot + com

Pled versus pleaded

  • January 7, 2014, 1:05pm

@Jeff J - "In short, here in the UK the past tense of plead is always written/spoken as pleaded." - Scotland is, at least for the moment, still part of the UK, and as has already been mentioned, 'pled' is often used in the legal sense, but not the begging sense in Scotland - He pled guilty but he pleaded for his life. For examples see my comment of December 22, 2012, 5:30am, or go just Google it: you'll find that many of the results are from official bodies or news outlets:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22pled%20guilty%22%20Scotland

@Brus - Have you leaded a good life and readed any good books lately?

You’ve got another think/thing coming

  • January 6, 2014, 3:29pm

@Traduttore - Yes please, go on, I'm collecting them.

You’ve got another think/thing coming

  • January 6, 2014, 3:28pm

It was certainly playing in New York in February 1909, but unfortunately I can find no texts. He seems to have had a pretty long career, this Arthur Lewis Tubbs; it's strange there's no Wikipedia article on him.

You’ve got another think/thing coming

  • January 6, 2014, 2:29pm

@Traduttore - OK, I've found this from A Deal In Ducks by Guy L Clements from 1921. That still beats the OED.

'Jackson thinks he has me in a pinch and that I will have to sell. Well he has another "think" coming."

But still looking

You’ve got another think/thing coming

  • January 6, 2014, 2:18pm

@Traduttore - a lawn with no flowers would probably just be called a lawn, maybe a garden, but definitely not a yard. Some time ago I was trying to find a picture of a backyard (our version) and got really frustrated because all I got was lovely gardens when what I wanted was something concrete or bricked over. Backyards was what we used to have in our slums.

I've found the full 1894 text of The Fruit of his Folly at Archive.org, but can't find the bit you're talking about. It certainly doesn't seem to be on p 26 of this edition, but if this is true this is exciting news, and I'll have to amend my blog post yet again!

But are sure it's this play? This seems to be set in New York City, and I can't see any scenes set in a theatre dressing room.

https://archive.org/stream/fruitofhisfolly00tubb#page/n7/mode/2up

You’ve got another think/thing coming

  • January 6, 2014, 1:53pm

@Traduttore - thanks for the 'guess' thing; I've updated my blog post (link above), which includes Ngram graphs and lots of links to Google Books, as well as a hat-tip to yourself - at the moment, with the 'if you think part', 'think' and 'thing' are neck and neck (1906), but there's nothing at Google Books for 'thing' with 'if you think ...' between 1800 and 1910

@_Shorty - OK, I'm now beginning to think that the idiom might have grown out of a usage without the 'if you think' part, maybe with think, thing or guess. So I don't totally discount what you say. I think we're really in uncharted (historical) territory here, chaps!.

You’ve got another think/thing coming

  • January 6, 2014, 12:40pm

@Traduttore - that's a lot to take in quickly, so I'll have a read of it at my leisure, but your thinking seems fairly akin to mine. That was a good idea to use a wildcard, I hadn't thought of that. I'd also read something about the guess version - could you give any references with 'If you think'? OK, here's one from 1906 and another from 1907 (from Google Books, via your Ngram):

"If you think I never ponder over the work you have done and are still doing for the protection of the furred and feathered people, you have another guess coming."

"If you don't believe there are such union men, then you have another guess coming."

I'm not sure it predates 'think', but it certainly seems to start around the same time, although it seems to have peaked around 1917. However, the results for this search are quite low (peaking at 000000300%) compared with '"another thing coming" and "another think coming". But it's quite interesting to compare them together:

http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=another+think+coming%2Canother+thing+coming%2Canother+guess+coming%2Cgot+another+think+coming%2Cgot+another+thing+coming&year_start=1880&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Canother%20think%20coming%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Canother%20thing%20coming%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Canother%20guess%20coming%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cgot%20another%20think%20coming%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cgot%20another%20thing%20coming%3B%2Cc0

Not surprisingly perhaps, when you try it with British books, 'guess' is rather less common.

And talking of British English, we never use "yard" for a green space with vegetation (this is a North American thing), so for us 'giardino', 'jardin', 'jardín' etc are always 'garden'. A yard for us is an area with a hard surface, typically surrounded by buildings or walls. Vive la différence!

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/yard-2

Questions

When “one of” many things is itself plural November 27, 2011
You’ve got another think/thing coming September 29, 2012
Fit as a butcher’s dog May 22, 2013
“reach out” May 25, 2013
Tell About October 18, 2013
tonne vs ton January 25, 2014
apostrophe with expressions of distance or time February 2, 2014
Natural as an adverb April 13, 2014
fewer / less May 3, 2014
Opposition to “pretty” March 7, 2015