Which one below is correct?
- (Something) added a few seconds ago
- (Something) added a few moments ago
- (Something) added a moment ago
- .....
Thanks!
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2The word "moment" is intentionally vague in terms of actual timespan. Depending on context, it could mean an imperceptible amount of time, a minute, an hour, a day, a week, a year, an eon ... ; in other words, it's all relative to whatever it's being compared with. There is no specific word in the English language which means "less than a minute", but "a moment ago" will do nicely if the context supports it. (BTW, "a" goes with singular words "a moment"; one would not say "a moments", plural).– Dan BronOct 24, 2014 at 15:34
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2Leading on from @Dan's point, it's not particularly common to pluralise moments in such contexts. It's such an imprecise term there's rarely any need to say a couple of moments - and because we invariably mean a short time, it would usually be inappropriate to work against that meaning by introducing the concept of several short (but imprecisely-defined) periods added together. Loc Ha - in practice most of us would probably use just now anyway.– FumbleFingersOct 24, 2014 at 15:56
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1"Just now" is another common phrase that can be used in this situation. Like "a moment ago", it's imprecise about how much time is meant.– The PhotonOct 24, 2014 at 20:54
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3 Answers
They are all correct. If you were to be designing a system that identified that something was added less than a minute ago you might also use:
(Something) added less than a minute ago
Thank you @The photon. I think "Just now" is the answer in my context - want to say something created/happened at a point less than 1 minute ago.
It happened just now!
It created just now!
The exact phrase would be:
(Something) added <number of seconds> seconds ago.
i.e. "New item added 34 seconds ago."
Many applications use this alternatively to "less than a minute ago". See Dropbox for example. Synchronization changes will be shown in seconds (under a minute).
