41
votes
Accepted
Is "slightly ajar" a tautology?
Redundancy or a pleonasm can be a device used by an author. That doesn't make it a grammar mistake. In some contexts, redundancy is avoided, but in many contexts it is just a natural aspect of ...
- 202k
31
votes
Accepted
I ___(to read) your book. It's fantastic. I'll finish it tonight
The verb read has two different pronunciations, its present simple form /riːd/ and its past simple form /red/. Neither tense belongs to the sample sentence
a) I read your book [at the moment]. It's ...
- 26.2k
22
votes
Is "slightly ajar" a tautology?
No, it is not a tautology.
'Ajar' means the door is partially open, or neither open nor closed. There are lots of gradations in between open and closed, so it seems perfectly reasonable to use an ...
- 96k
17
votes
Why is the passive "are described" not grammatically correct in this sentence?
In one study, [adjunct]
43% of employees ____ as being under heavy stress [subject]
had [verb at head of main clause]
weak concentration and poor work performance. [object]
The subject here is a noun ...
- 583
16
votes
Why was 'Having seen that it is about to rain...' not the correct answer?
had better
I suspect that you were caught out by the word “had”. After all, “had” is the past tense of “to have” (“I had a dog”), and it’s also used as a helper to signify the past perfect (“I had ...
- 788
12
votes
Why is the passive "are described" not grammatically correct in this sentence?
In general, phrases can not share a parent unless they are coordinated.1 Therefore, the two uncoordinated finite verbs ("are" and "had") can not head the same predicate. We thus ...
- 15.3k
9
votes
Why is the passive "are described" not grammatically correct in this sentence?
This question already has 3 great answers, but all seem oriented towards more advanced students. OP doesn't specify the grade level of the students in the question, but this approach might be more ...
- 691
7
votes
I ___(to read) your book. It's fantastic. I'll finish it tonight
If you've already read the book, then "I'll finish it tonight" makes no sense. This is why neither 2 ("read") nor 3 ("have read") can be the correct answer. Answer 4 can ...
- 5,285
6
votes
Why is the passive "are described" not grammatically correct in this sentence?
The gap in the sentence is a post-modification of the noun "employees". In this case, the post-modification serves to identify or specify which subset of employees is being identified or ...
- 3,005
6
votes
I ___(to read) your book. It's fantastic. I'll finish it tonight
To me, the sentence "I read [present tense] your book" makes it sound like you have an ongoing habit of reading the book, and you don't have any plans to quit that habit. In particular, it ...
- 5,672
6
votes
Accepted
Can both "from"s be retained
Not quite. "From X to Y" describes a range of things, but doesn't function as a noun phrase itself. You need a noun for it to modify; the idiom is everything from X to Y:
This is a place ...
- 3,478
5
votes
Accepted
What is the most appropiate modal verb in this context?
I would have chosen "can". This is the most idiomatic, but it has little to do with logic, or the meaning of "be able".
The reason is subtle and seems to be connected to the fact ...
- 202k
5
votes
Accepted
What I think the purpose of the life is is to live happily with our loved ones
Yes, "is is" is grammatically correct in that sentence, and yes it has the exact meaning you reduce it to.
The subject is, "What I think the purpose of life is" (not "the life&...
- 48.8k
5
votes
Is it correct to say "Many are to rest, but few are to relax"?
It's grammatical, but it's odd, and doesn't mean quite what you intend.
The construction has a feel of "should" or "supposed to".
So many are to rest means "many are supposed ...
- 73.7k
5
votes
"A man is standing outside/on the outside of my house"
In neither case should you use "on", though it would be grammatically correct.
If the man is standing "on" the outside of the house that would suggest to me that he is standing on ...
- 202k
5
votes
Why is the passive "are described" not grammatically correct in this sentence?
*In one study, 43% of employees are described as being under heavy stress had weak concentration and poor work performance.
This sentence is ungrammatical because the relationship between the two ...
- 1,189
5
votes
Home or house, which one is grammatically correct?
In your example, both work grammatically but it all depends on the intention of meaning.
House refers to a building, it's specific and tells the listener/reader exactly what type of building the ...
5
votes
I don't understand use of "you" in "away support you were amazing"
The message uses extremely informal writing. There are three separate parts:
"Fun game" Hopefully self explanatory.
"good performance from the boys" This is complimenting "...
- 15.3k
4
votes
Accepted
Is it correct "I used to use this pen."?
Both sentences are correct.
I used to use this pen.
This sentence communicates that using a particular pen was a habit you no longer indulge in for whatever reason unknown to the reader.
We use &...
4
votes
Accepted
Semantically vague sentence (I think?)
The shop man used two expressions to describe the desk. In the same way that he might have used adjectives - "The desk is large and old" - he said that it was [made in the] early nineteenth ...
- 49.3k
4
votes
Why is the passive "are described" not grammatically correct in this sentence?
I want to reduce the answer to the simplest explanation. Your student is misunderstanding the sentence structure.
Your student is interpreting a structure like this:
All [walls] are painted yellow.
...
- 1,727
4
votes
Can I say "I'm doing this first than you"?
First is one of the few adjectives in English that does not have a comparative. It's a true absolute adjective: either something is first or it's not. You can't say I did it firster or I did it more ...
- 3,113
4
votes
Why was 'Having seen that it is about to rain...' not the correct answer?
This is an idiomatic use of "see", and doesn't really mean "behold" or "look at with your eyes". It means more "be aware" or "know".
Seeing as it's ...
- 202k
4
votes
Is "slightly ajar" a tautology?
The phrase "slightly ajar" could be considered a bit redundant, but it's not necessarily a clear-cut tautology. "Ajar" itself means slightly open, so adding "slightly" ...
- 49
3
votes
Accepted
How does this sentence follow subject verb agreement?
The subject of "have" is not "the text files". The subject is the gerund "including". The gerund is singular, so "has" is the correct form for subject-verb ...
- 48.8k
3
votes
Accepted
Is the which clause in this sentence used correctly?
It's not great poetry, but it's fine.
A "simp" may be a person, but it is also a thing.
Think of plumbers. They're people but they're also a profession (at least in abbreviation).
"This ...
- 1,196
3
votes
What is the correct word order in the included sentence?
The conjunction "and" coordinates two prepositional phrases: "as a graduate of a vocational college" and "as someone who has already successfully absolved an internship". ...
- 15.3k
3
votes
What is the correct word order in the included sentence?
Initial because is syntactically irrelevant to the issue under consideration here, so I'll pretend it doesn't exist (at least then the two texts look more like "sentences").
The first ...
- 68.6k
3
votes
Accepted
Is the word about in this sentence being used as a noun?
It is not being used as a noun, but as an adverb.
Although your parsing of the sentence is not correct, it does make grammatical sense. A noun could fit into that structure. Consider:
That summary ...
- 9,061
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