New answers tagged sentence-construction
1
I think that versions 1 and 5 sounds best. I did an Ngram search and 1 produces the most hits (probably because it's only three words, compared to five words for 5), but most of the references are to people failing to cooperate with the tax service, or governments failing to cooperate with each other.
5 produces more hits that relate to interpersonal ...
1
To express the idea of longer or shorter intervals between repeated events, we can say no less (or no more) often (or frequent) than some time indicator thus no less often than monthly, no more frequent than quarterly.
1
You might say "contributes to the phenomenon" to refer to what was just stated. Then, "plays a significant role" (without the "in"), will be understood to refer to the same subject.
0
Yes, you can put "The rest of the evening" at that start of the sentence.
A normal sentence is in active voice. Here is an example:
I spent the evening at home.
You can turn it into a passive voice sentence by removing the subject and moving the object to the front:
The evening was spent at home.
In a passive voice sentence, the active-voice ...
1
Technically, the sentence does not break any grammatical rules. Semantically, it is poorly written. The central noun in the appositive phrase is change. So we look in the adjacent clause for a noun phrase that can the appositive can refer to. Our choices are woman and she. Neither of these can be described as a change.
I suppose you could change the ...
1
You've answered your own question really - it is a shortened way of saying "I'm just making sure".
Omitting one's own pronoun / possessive pronoun like this is quite common, especially in informal, extemporaneous speech.
-Is that right?
-Of course it's right.
-Just checking!
There would be similar constructions where nothing is 'omitted' and it ...
1
You can use "it", which would be taken to refer to the taxi itself. If you use "he", "she", or "they" you would not also use "the driver" later on; you might say "and then look(s) at you". These days "they" with the plural forms of the verbs is probably the best choice.
Please note my ...
0
I don't like B. It sounds much better if the subject is repeated.
This shorter example,
He is angry, and is waiting for you.
is not ungrammatical, but I think it is improved by repeating the subject:
He's angry, and he's waiting for you.
Personally, I prefer example C, though I would contract "I am" to "I'm" in both places.
2
"Top 100 best" is redundant. "Top 100" is hyphenated when used as an adjective ("top-100 list") but not when discussing the top 100 of an item. You could say, for example,
My university is rated as one of the top 100 universities in the world (or worldwide).
My university appears in X's ranking of the top 100 universities ...
3
Your first sentence is nearly correct. All you need to do is drop the from. The word starting already implies from.
I used to watch movies alone but starting this winter I plan to attend a cinema club.
Your second sentence will be understood but probably is not the best way to phrase it. Since best refers to things that happened in the past. We cannot ...
0
An expression that could fit all of the examples you shared would be "as of":
I watched movies alone before, but as of this winter, I plan to attend a cinema club.
He always was a lazy coach potato, but as of this month, he decided to go to a local gym for some reason.
She didn't pay much attention to him before, but as of last Friday, she became ...
1
It was always my intention to play for Team GB
This sentence uses past simple. It describes an intention that started a long time ago and finished before now. It would be appropriate if the speaker is currently playing for Team GB, so the period of intent is in the past.
It has always been my intention to play for Team GB
This sentence uses present ...
2
Your intuitions are correct that only the temporal measures can be possessive without "worth". CGEL p. 470 calls these measure genitives:
[46] [an hour's delay], [one week's holiday], this [hour's delay], a second [one hour's delay], the [one dollar's worth of chocolates] he bought
Genitives of this kind measure just temporal length or value: we ...
0
There are certainly precedents for using most before a past participle. Here is a typical example:
It consistently listed among the top 10 NHK programs broadcast on its general channel and among the 20 most watched shows on Japanese television in greater Tokyo. - Broadcasting Politics in Japan, Ellis S Krauss, 2018
Examples of killed being used in this way ...
4
Your clause has a verb ("is") and an object ("news," modified to be the noun phrase "late-breaking news").
You must also have a subject.
The pronoun "this" is the subject of the clause. You cannot remove it. "While is late-breaking news" makes no grammatical sense.
0
The math relationship you are describing is an 'inverse-ratio', which describes an output (waste) that gets smaller as the input (cost) gets larger. In your example, this is a 'proportional inverse-ratio', where every new unit of cost results in the same amount of new reduction in waste.
3
There is a taboo about using double negatives in English, but that only applies if you need one negative and you use two. For example, if you wanted to say that you intended to remain where you are, you could say:
I'm not going anywhere - correct
I'm not going nowhere - incorrect - double negative
There are, however, situations where two negatives are ...
3
As Kate Bunting and other answers explain, the second statement sounds clumsy you can rephrase (which is a better option), but if your focus is not on 'no doubt' rather its usage as an adverb like the usages of also, furthermore etc. The sentence can be made better by the use of a comma. As demonstrated in the following example:
Serena Williams is nursing a ...
1
Some people might think "both" doesn't correspond to "or", and thus say that you should change "or" to "and"... or change "both are.." to "either is an...".
It's not really a grammatical error.
1
Grammatically they're all fine, but needs and demands aren't exactly the same thing. Needs = food, water, baby powder, and so on. Demands = those things + the latest iPhone, a bigger room, and so on. Which are you referring to?
"a lot of" sounds neutral. "full of" sounds a tiny bit more informal.
3
My classmate argues that "Studying British girls is smart" is grammatically correct because "[Eating] {apples} is [healthy]" is correct.
Yes, the two sentences have the same construction: Subject, verb, adjective. In both sentences the subject is a noun phrase consisting of a gerund (the true subject) and an object of that gerund. Both ...
0
The person in question is confused by homomorphism in the English language. There is a possibility of ambigous reading even if coordination is done right. Such ambigous cases, e.g. garden-path sentences, may be considered stylistically bad if they weren't meant as a joke. In this case coordination is wrong, so his phrase got wrong meaning.
In the declarative ...
1
The second example is not currently grammatically correct. It could be made correct (though still not good) like this:
...in response to the current situation in Afghanistan, in which the Taliban has taken over most of the country, which resulted from the withdrawal of US troops.
See, in the first example, the current situation in Afghanistan, where... the ...
2
Okay, so with the descriptions given I think "as a result of" is more convincing compared to "which resulted from" because "as a result of" tries to show that in one way or the other the withdrawal of US troops has somehow laid a room for the Taliban to take over Afghanistan, while "which resulted from" tries to offer ...
7
When we say "verb the object adjective", we mean "make the object adjective by verbing". "Boil the kettle dry" means "make the kettle dry by boiling", just as "paint the door red" means "make the door red by painting".
When we use an adverb, like "verb the object adverb", we mean "do ...
1
You don't always need "one" after "another". It's shortened but grammatically correct. A longer version of this sentence would be:
"More precisely, a local module or package can shadow another one which is hanging directly off sys.path."
What the sentence means precisely depends on the source text. It seems that there is a ...
1
As @Richard Winters pointed out, it's a matter of context whether it works or not.
In your example, the "is, is" is a bit unusual. While your substitution doesn't work in your example, a small change makes it ok.
Whatever it is, it is what he was trying to find.
No matter what it is, it is what he was trying to find.
I changed the tense, because ...
2
You could say something like:
I know what it feels like
I know what you are going through
There is also an expression "I feel your pain", but it generally refers to mental anguish rather than physical pain- often used ironically to somebody who is over-reacting to a trivial problem.
1
You can use as to mean because:
Merriam-Webster as
7 : for the reason that : because, since
stayed home as she had no car
However, the second clause includes the word "as", and it is no longer an independent clause. What it is depends on the interpretation of as. The dictionary above calls as, in this sense, a subordinating conjunction, which would ...
0
I agree with the suggested change that it is more concise without changing the meaning in a significant way.
That being said, your original sentence sounds fine to me and I would have not have suggested this change if I was proofreading your text.
2
The auto-caption function is not helping, neither is the modern trend to use an ellipsis show cut off speech rather than a dash as was used in the past.
When I rewrite it like this:
Well, how—
If you have—
Out of six attempts you're choosing two of them to have scores: how many ways are there?
You can see that he has started three sentences, but two of ...
-1
The sentence is correct, and would still be correct without the "it".
I'll break it down in stages to show why it's correct with "it", and how to understand it.
Let's say, he was in a quandary about something, and that something was the indirect question: "which selection from his extensive repertoire it would be feasible to perform ...
0
You want to use a relative pronoun here to connect "He was in a quandary about which selection from his extensive repertoire" and "X would be feasible to perform for the children."
I believe The "X would be feasible to perform for the children" is an adjective clause I describing "selection", and relative pronouns ...
1
Here is how the bolded sentence in the posted question reads:
I’ve noticed that the people most adamant about creating their own state or being a part of their own state are the poorest regions, and in the current system, they are not happy, because it is not working for them.
And here is how it might be clarified if we restored the implied wording omitted ...
3
Harold Wentworth, American Dialect Dictionary (1944) has this relevant coverage of come followed by a time-related noun:
come ... 3. Used with a term expressing future time, = 'when (that time) comes'; — now oldfashioned.
And Dictionary of American Regional English (1985) has this:
come v ... Intr[ansitive] senses. ... 5 Of a specified time or seasonal ...
0
I don't think the problem is grammar or tense. I just think the structure is a bit awkward. I would simply split the quote:
My art professor praised my work, saying I do "exceptional work" and "always go above and beyond."
0
There's nothing wrong with the syntax here. I'm not sure a noun has anything to do with it; you have the independent clause "My art professor praised my work," and then you modify it with a dependent clause functioning as an adverb. Although the rest of the sentence has a quote and a compound verb, the structure is no different than: "The man ...
1
A "list" doesn't have to be full sentences, and it is normal to write sentence fragments. You could embed your list in a paragraph with "You can".
Our keyboard has many features. You can
Change the color with an app
...
But if you do this you should make sure that all the sentences can start "You can..."
By the way, saying &...
2
(b) is what people normally say. A fluent speaker would be unlikely to say (a). It's "get negative thoughts out of your mind" or "out of your head".
0
Your first sentence:
I joined this company after six months it was founded.
Means you joined in January 1990, and the company was formed in July 1990, not what you meant.
Your two other sentences both mean what you meant, the first might be more native.
I joined this company six months after it was founded.
I joined this company six months after it had ...
0
No need to repeat it if you have a parallel structure.
He has cleaned the room and swept the porch.
He has done his homework and picked up the clothes in his room.
She has eaten the haddock but not touched the potatoes.
There is no need to repeat the auxiliary in a parallel structure.
Non-parallel structure:
He has cleaned his room but did not wash his ...
0
Another alternative:
I would be obliged (if)...
0
"so concocted as to spread the maximum terror": concocted in a way designed to spread the maximum terror.
0
I do not believe it is grammatical, and it certainly is not idiomatic. It will, nevertheless, probably be understood by most people despite its oddity.
One shouldn’t give due credit unless is given likewise
is definitely ungrammatical because the clause introduced by “unless” has no subject. People might puzzle out what was intended, but they might not.
...
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