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Let's say you and your siblings haven't watched a film for ages, due to your different busy working lives. And you say:

As I remember, the last time we did it was when we were still in college, about 10 years ago, we haven't done it again since we landed our own different jobs, as our work schedules are hectic.

Are the bold letters correctly phrased?

  • The bold letters make me a bit unsure due to the "again" before "since"...
  • Also, the "our own different jobs" thing. --grammar books don't teach these.
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    There's nothing syntactically wrong with including again in your context. But it's totally redundant, and idiomatically "awkward", because [haven't done it] since pragmatically forces the implication that the activity was done at least once before the stated time. So effectively you're repeating yourself, and although redundancy is often perfectly natural in English, that's not the case here.
    – FumbleFingers
    Jan 1, 2019 at 15:21
  • I guess it's better to omit that "again". Anyway, do you find "our own different jobs" awkward?
    – John Arvin
    Jan 1, 2019 at 16:07
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    To be honest, what I find most "awkward" about your "since" clause is the landed our own bit. I can see you need [different] jobs, since the broad thrust of it is that you haven't watched movies with your siblings since college - because now you have jobs, so "social synchronisation" is more difficult. But presumably you never actually worked together (on the same shift) anyway, so I'd have been happier with the more straightforward ...we haven't done it since we got jobs... But this is "style advice", not really to do with "learning English" as such.
    – FumbleFingers
    Jan 1, 2019 at 17:16
  • I see, got it. Maybe mine is for written.
    – John Arvin
    Jan 1, 2019 at 18:25

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There's nothing syntactically wrong with including "again" in your context. But it's totally redundant, and idiomatically "awkward", because "[haven't done it] since" pragmatically forces the implication that the activity was done at least once before the stated time. So effectively you're repeating yourself, and although redundancy is often perfectly natural in English, that's not the case here.

To be honest, what I find most "awkward" about your "since" clause is the "landed our own" bit. I can see you need [different] jobs, since the broad thrust of it is that you haven't watched movies with your siblings since college - because now you have jobs, so "social synchronisation" is more difficult. But presumably you never actually worked together (on the same shift) anyway, so I'd have been happier with the more straightforward ...we haven't done it since we got jobs... But this is "style advice". – FumbleFingers

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