4
Her dying wish was for him to hike the Ap. trail.
Him hiking the Ap. trail was her entire dying wish. Her dying wish equaled him taking up the hike.
Her dying wish for him was to hike the Ap. trail.
She may have had many dying wishes for different people. The one she had for him was him doing the hike.
2
In this case the correct preposition is for as the pelican colony can be considered to be a distinguishing or noticeable feature as in:
Pelican Island, the rocky island named for its large pelican colony.
Named after is appropriate when the name comes from a proper noun, such as a person's name.
Pelican Island, the rocky island named after its ...
1
You are asking whether omitting a preposition from a phrasal verb makes any difference. Well, if you go by the definition, it mentions -
a phrase that consists of a verb with a preposition or adverb or both, the meaning of which is different from the meaning of its separate parts
While in most of the cases, it's true, in some cases, as in here, it makes ...
1
As a native American English speaker, both versions are roughly interchangeable.
However, "being + [verb]" implies to me a stronger focus on the action behind something, while words that end in "-ed" imply more of an adjective.
For 1/2, I would prefer 1 as it focuses on the action of informing families, instead of the fact that families are informed.
For ...
1
Yes, the use of "back at" in these sentences is natural and grammatically correct.
In these sentences, "Back" indicates that the scene is in the past. This is redundant, because the sentences' verbs also use the past tense. In formal writing, similar sentences usually start with "At" instead of "Back at".
In these sentences, "at" is appropriate because a ...
1
The full source sentence is:
This captures nicely some of the logic of evolutionary theory – a piece that many people seem to not appreciate – namely that evolution cannot “see” what you feel; it can only “see” what organisms do (seeing in this sense refers to selecting for variants that do reproductively useful things).
In the domain of evolutionary ...
1
Selecting variants means that you only pick variants.
I am selecting variants. (I will only choose variants.)
Selecting for variants means that you pick things that aren't necessarily variants themselves, but which will lead to variants.
I am selecting for variants. (I will choose anything that will get me closer to having a variant in the end.)
In ...
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