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Grammar
Posted by: em-admin
18 / 12 / 12
Is singular they OK? Dear Madam or Sir I have just discovered your excellent website and begun perusing some of your articles. In the one by Jack Elliot on technical writing I noticed one linguistic point that we (translators at a company in Germany) often discuss but cannot always agree on. Jack writes: ‘An automotive […]
26 / 10 / 12
Blog reader Fritz asks: I realised just recently that I have been using ‘eg’ and ‘ie’ as though they were interchangeable, yet I have a nagging suspicion that this isn’t the case. Can you enlighten me? The two Latin abbreviations do indeed have subtly different meanings – eg stands for ‘exempli gratia’, which means ‘for […]
Blog reader Helen asks: Can I have some advice on how to use ‘whether’? As in ‘whether to write something’ or ‘whether or not to write something’. Leaving out ‘or not’ feels incomplete but putting it in feels unwieldy and unnecessary. You can test this by asking yourself if the use of ‘or not’ serves […]
Blog reader Paul asks: I’ve seen ‘fast’ and ‘quickly’ used as though they were interchangeable. Is this correct? Strictly speaking, fast is an adjective while quickly is an adverb. Fast refers to speed, and quickly refers to time. For example: ‘That car is very fast.’ ‘The car quickly pulled over.’ The confusion arises because American […]
Blog reader Jo asks: I recently watched a television interview with David Cameron during which he used the term ‘stadia’ as the plural of stadium. It sounded very affected, but is it correct? Stadia is indeed the correct Latin plural of stadium. It is, however, far more common for English speakers to use stadiums. Latin […]
Posted by: Catie Holdridge
Blog reader Annemarie asks: For a while now, I have been wondering whether I should write ‘I look forward to [doing something]’ or ‘I’m looking forward to [doing something]’. In all my English lessons, the first option was clearly the correct one. But lately, I have heard and read the second more and more often. […]
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