New answers tagged sentence-construction
0
This is pretty good already, but I would write something like:
"I have previously taught both English and Arabic, and this has led me to deciding that I wish to do start doing translation too."
The latter part reads a bit more positively than your original, so is better for an application letter. If instead you were writing for a blog-post or ...
1
give back some of the good you've given me
No, this is not at all idiomatic.
The most idiomatic phrase to express this idea is "return the kindness", eg:
"You were so kind to me, I would like to return the kindness".
You may also hear "return the favour", but some people may see a "favour" as a 'token' gesture and ...
1
The that here refers to something that is not in this sentence. This sentence must be part of a larger discussion, and the that is what is being discussed. Thus, the listener will know what the word that means in this sentence.
To be like something is to be similar to it. For example, jogging is like running.
Endure is to "go through" something, ...
2
If you know someone to be in a certain condition, you know that they are in that condition. Your sentence could be rewritten as
Someone who, I know, is dead.
Someone refers to the 'someone' mentioned in the first sentence.
I know someone to be dead
is a different sentence, indicating what you know.
1
I guess you are contrasting the sentence in the title,
Do you think it is better for people to live in a house, or in an apartment?
with
Which do you think is better, to live in a house or in an apartment?
Either is correct for this idea, but note the addition of a necessary comma in the first sentence, after the word "house". Without the comma,...
1
I think it sounds fine as written. However, to be even clearer and to remove any ambiguity, I'd recommend the following:
Results indicate that this approach equally distributes tasks between devices.
2
They are sentence fragments. They are grammatically incomplete.
They also are not meant to be read rationally. They are intended to reflect the emotional turmoil of falling in love. To be read as intended, they must be read as essentially appositive phrases in the preceding sentence. Trying to make sense of what I see as over-written balderdash, it seems to ...
1
Your suggested sentence
The doctor has just finished his shift but didn't leave yet.
does include the word 'yet' but it adds more information, so could be argued that it doesn't have the same meaning. I'd also write it as
The doctor has just finished his shift but hasn't left yet.
so all the tenses agree.
The only way I can think of to re-write it is:
&...
2
I agree with Fumbles that the person who wrote the question should be shot, but that does not seem to me to call for rejecting the student's question. The student should not be blamed for the errors of the teacher.
There is no way, in my opinion, that the sentence asked about can be revised idiomatically to express exactly the same meaning by inserting the ...
1
Yes, if it were “, which are...”
Sort of. It is the verb of the predicate, but “gaining” is also a verb acting as an adjective (a participle).
1
That sounds natural. I think I would usually say monitoring progress without the the but I think that is just a matter of personal style and the is fine there too. As @KateBunting mentioned in a comment when it is finished is an equally correct alternative.
12
My instinctive response is: "interaction of x with y" is to describe what x is doing to y, but not what y is doing to x.
"Interaction between x and y" describes what both are doing with each other.
See, one is one way, and the other is both ways.
However, the word "interaction" itself assumes that there is already a 2-way action ...
5
They are different and not necessarily interchangeable. You would need to provide greater context for us to determine which would be correct.
To illustrate; interaction of x with y does not necessarily imply any agency on the part of y (although it could), simply that x is acting.
Conversely, interaction between x and y necessarily implies agency with both ...
1
"I saw him upset." and "I saw him being upset." are grammatically correct.
Both are rather awkward ("I saw him being upset" is the more awkward of the two), however, people would probably just say "He was upset when I saw him."
0
It would be probably more idiomatic to leave out 'a car' entirely. 'Learning to drive' implies a car, same as 'learning to fly' implies a plane, rather than flapping your arms ;)
You don't even need the 'how' in there. Just 'learned to drive' would be sufficient.
Your line is conversational, it's terse, it's combative. The fewer words, the more angry it ...
0
It is the constraint that induced cooperation and led to negotiation and adjustment. It may not make a big difference, since the referendum became the constraint, but I think that links syntactically to the nearest preceding noun.
0
that is a relative pronoun: it connects together two clauses, and represents a noun in the main clause buy acting as the subject of object pronoun in the subordinate clause.
In this particular sentence, the subordinate clause comes in two parts, linked by and, and that represents referendum (which is also an institutional constraint) as the subject of the ...
6
The answer to your question is
a) last night i lay in bed so blue.
"Lay" is the past tense of the intransitive "lie". I lie (present) I will lie (future) I lay (simple past) I had lain (past perfect). I want to lie on the bed. Last night I lay on the bed.
Also, confusingly, there is the transitive verb "lay". I lay (present) I ...
2
The OP would like a succinct description?
These are premium sausages.
From Lexico
premium
2.2 [as modifier] Relating to or denoting a commodity of superior quality and therefore a higher price.
‘premium lagers’
An example of usage:
…UK-based manufacturer and supplier of premium sausage and meat products.
[we] deliver exactly what customers are looking for ...
2
You could either say:
If I do not say anything, then I only want you to follow the
road.
or
If I do not say anything, then the only thing I want you to do is to follow the road.
In less words:
If I do not say anything, then just/simply follow the road.
0
The second option is correct - you need the "be" in that sentence. "be" is your verb in that sentence
Hopefully someone who knows grammar will be able to explain why (I never studied English grammar - just a native speaker)
0
Yes it's grammatically correct, but including the couch in the statement doesn't seem to bring much benefit. If your intent is to say they're near the couch but not on it, then I would suggest "not on but near the couch", or just "on the floor near the couch.
1
"Upfront" (or "Up front") is correct, as you're asking him to tell you at the start (which is what "up front" means).
Because "upfront" is a preposition you can't do something "upfrontly" any more than you can do something "fromly".
1
Children are easily influenced is a general comment, but your first three sentences imply the speaker's intention to influence children (in (2) and (3) the speaker would probably be someone in the advertising business).
(4) would be better expressed as These instructions are easy for students to follow.
1
I would say “My first meeting has been extended past 3pm, so I won’t be able to join the 3pm meeting in time”. You could use “beyond” instead of “past”.
Why? It makes clear that there are two meetings, that could be confusing. In a corporate setting I’d slightly prefer to say 3am or 3pm instead of 3o’clock.
The comma after “extended to” or “extended until” ...
1
"extendend to after 3pm" (no comma) is quite understandable; "until after 3pm" is also clear. You don't separate the prepositions with a comma, nor would you pause in speech.
You can split it up:
The meeting has been extended and we won't be finished at 3pm...
But while that avoids the double preposition, it is a bit more wordy.
Or you ...
2
What you've written conveys your meaning. I don't think you need the particular phrase you ask for. I might say it a little differently, perhaps
The Effective Altruism movement has had substantial impact even
though it is little known.
I hope your surrounding text describes how that impact came about, given that the movement is unknown. What was the ...
1
Bang up bangers, bro
This would be the Aussie version
2
Neither is very common, except in speeches given by people learning English.
"There are four people in my family." is a simple and correct expression.
It is probably more common, if you are asked to talk about your family, to describe them:
Some families are simple
Tell me about your family
There's my wife and we have three children
You don't ...
4
You could also say:
"These are choice, all-beef sausages."
"The sausages are grade-A [pork]."
Choice refers to the second best quality meat in the US Food & Drug Administration rating system (after Prime, which you could say as well, though "choice" also simply means very good), and "all-beef" means there are no ...
13
All are correct and idiomatic.
The first two are very similar in meaning (the preposition phrase and the adjective are almost the same in meaning). The third refers to "these" not "those" so is slightly more specific.
They don't have quite the same meaning as "...are made of good quality meat". You could make a low-quality ...
2
English follows Subject-Verb-Object for most simple declarative sentences, and [Modal]Verb-Subject-Object (or the rest of the predicate) for many questions. Inverting a declarative sentence's subject and modal verb will convey a question:
John is walking to the store.
Becomes
Is John walking to the store?
If you did as you are thinking, and asked "...
3
Why do think it might be we?
This is a ditransitive verb, and like most ditransitives it can take two different patterns:
The babysitter read a story to us
or
The babysitter read us a story.
Similarly
I gave a book to John.
or
I gave John a book.
and
Sheila baked a cake for her mother.
or
Sheila baked her mother a cake.
In either case, pronouns ...
2
Sentences begin with a capital letter and end with a period or question mark. Your example isn’t punctuated as a sentence. Because it came from a dictionary, and we can see the same fragments in many other places in that dictionary, we can conclude it was probably intentional and not hasty writing or a typo.
It’s not a sentence, so it doesn’t follow the ...
4
Have you seen John lately?
No, I haven't seen him for five years. Why, is he back in town?
vs
When I was in Spain last year, someone tapped me on the shoulder. I turned round - it was John! I hadn't seen him for ten years. I see him regularly now.
"had" is past tense.
2
The separation between "I" and the second "am" is too great in this case, in my opinion. It is not exactly wrong but it feels strained.
Either use "I'm" or write "I am" in full.
5
The correct way to say it is
I don't cook sushi because i got told off the first time i tried.
also:
"Got" is a common daily-English usage in these cases. It means the same thing as using "was". While fine in daily speech, it would not do in formal writing or a formal presentation.
So you can use 'got' or 'was' it does not really ...
0
"Others" refers to "other decisions". The sentence in bold could be expressed:
A popular vote, even when settling a fundamental issue, involves just one clear decision independent from the other decisions.
That is, a popular vote could be a "yes" or "no" choice, resolving one issue, which is therefore independent ...
0
In my opinion this is simply a very poorly written sentence. I agree that the meaning is probably as interpreted by Ethan Bolker. However, as Ethan says "the left and the young are two divisions of society that may overlap ... you can't think of them as opposed". And yet Linder seems to describe them as being opposed.
Maybe the excuse is that Wolf ...
0
In this paragraph the left and the young are two divisions of society that may overlap - they are neither identical nor distinct. That means (from a game theory perspective) that you can't think of them as opposed. Cooperation and opposition between members of those groups can shift when different issues are considered.
The opposite of young would be old, of ...
0
It shames us as a nation [that a freedom fighter has to scrape a living
singing in the streets].
That bracketed element is a declarative content clause.
This is an extraposition construction with the dummy pronoun "it" as subject and the content clause as extraposed subject.
The basic (non-extraposed) version would be:
That a freedom fighter has ...
1
It is a noun clause. You can restate the sentence as
That a freedom fighter has to scrape a living singing in the streets shames us as a nation
English, however, finds it awkward to make a subordinate clause the subject of a sentence. The “it” in your sentence is formally the subject of the sentence but carries no meaning on its own. The referent of the ...
3
A very old comedy routine, performed by two people.
Person A: I say I say I say.
Person B: What do you say?
Person A: My dog's got no nose.
Person B: No nose? How does he smell?
Person A: Bloody awful!
The joke is based on two possible meanings of 'smell' - (1) be able to sense odours (2) have an odour. Person B means to ask "By what means is the dog ...
0
Don't try and pack multiple ideas in one clause. Here you telling us the number of children in your family AND the height of your son. Those are two different ideas. So communicate them in two sentences.
I have one son and three daughters. My son is tall.
This follows the "end weight" principle of longer phrases at the end of sentences.
You can ...
1
Example: Can we say: "I read this book millennia ago",
Please, don't offer "more applicable" variants, only say about
grammar.
To answer the above and only the above:
Yes, it is grammatically perfect to say, "I read this book millennia ago"
0
It is correct, though the plural "millennia ago" would be a little better. "Years ago", "decades ago", "centuries ago": these are also all possible.
It would be rather unusual. A millennium is a period of 1000 years, so "millennia ago" would seem to reference a time between 2 and 10 thousand years ago, ...
-1
To take your example
There were a lot of (something) millenniums (millennia) ago
We could say
There were a lot of dinosaurs millenniums (millennia) ago
because they roamed the earth many thousands of years ago, in fact many millions. You could use it figuratively or humorously I suppose too
There were a lot of beatniks millenniums (millennia) ago
even ...
1
Her grammar is non-standard.
This video will be a little different.
also, at a different point, she says:
The more prepared you are, the more successful your interview
would be.
This is also non-standard.
The more prepared you are, the more successful your interview will be.
The more prepared you were, the more successful your interview would be.
EDIT - ...
0
It is almost clear. "And as he does" is clear (though some will have problens with using "And" to begin the sentence). There might be problems with using "appears", because it suggests that somebody saw Jack. If you are writing a play that is good, because the audience sees him. Otherwise it could suggest Pete saw him, so "...
0
I'll let you rewrite the test, because you were sick when you took it the first time. -conjunction
I'll let you rewrite the test, because of your special circumstances. - preposition
because is a conjunction, and must be followed by a clause- something that contains a verb. because of is a preposition, and must be followed by a noun, pronoun, noun phrase or ...
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