These days/Recently/On these days,

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Hoa Thai

#456137 Sat, 22 Dec 07 10:50 PM

Hi,

Below are phrases that use 'In'. To me, the first one is correct. For the rest, I think using 'In' with plural 'days' is okay, except the last one, which looks and sounds odd. Could anyone please share your thoughts?

"In this day and age"

"In one of my darkest days"
"In these days and ages"
"In these days, ...."
"In these days of ...."

"In this days ..."

Thanks and Best Regards,
Hoa Thai

Hoa Thai

Joined on Mon, Oct 15 2007

Vietnam

Contributing Member (1,092)

Best Regards - Hoa Thai

Regards, Plurals

Yankee

#456138 Sat, 22 Dec 07 11:02 PM

Hoa Thai wrote:
Besides these two examples, my Google search from a gateway in Vietnam shows more than 180,000 hits using the same phrase, "In this days". They cannot be all wrong!
Could you please explain?

Hi Hoa Thai
I'd say they ARE indeed all wrong. From what I saw (doing the same search), the results for "in this days" are:
- from people in non-English speaking countries
- a case of a missing apostrophe (i.e. should be possessive: in this day's episode)
- a few other typos

Using 'this' instead of 'these' is an extremely common mistake for ESL students to make.

Using only the number of Google hits for a particular phrase is frequently very misleading! Just try googling "look forward to see" (which is always a grammatical error and also a typical ESL mistake). I get over 800,000 hits for that. They're all the same error. As I'm sure you know, the correct usage is "look forward to seeing".

Yankee

Joined on Sat, Apr 15 2006

Connecticut, USA

Senior Member (4,012)

Amy "You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus." - Mark Twain

Possessives, Numbers, Apostrophes

Hoa Thai

#456143 Sat, 22 Dec 07 11:11 PM

Hi Amy,

It was a slip of my mind when I typed while I meant 'these' instead of 'this'. 'In this days' is definitely wrong, and I corrected it with my last post. Could you kindly review the content of that post and share your thoughts with us?

Thanks,
Hoa Thai

Hoa Thai

Marius Hancu

#456249 Sun, 23 Dec 07 11:03 AM

"In this day and age"

"In one of my darkest days"
*"In these days and ages"
*"In these days, ...."
"In these days of ...."

Marius Hancu

Joined on Wed, Apr 26 2006

Montreal, Canada

Veteran Member (11,629)

Yankee

#456261 Sun, 23 Dec 07 12:28 PM

Hoa Thai wrote:
Hi,

Below are phrases that use 'In'. To me, the first one is correct. For the rest, I think using 'In' with plural 'days' is okay, except the last one, which looks and sounds odd.

Hi Hoa Thai
The original question was not simply one of using 'in' with 'days'. There are plenty of phrases that use those two words together. For example:

In days gone by
In days of old
In days of yore
In those days
In (the) days to come
In the old days
In recent days
In days (rather than in minutes, for example)

The original question also involved the use of the word 'these' -- specifically "In these days,".
I agree with Marius that Angliholic's usage of "In these days," is generally not something that is used in English.
It is quite common, however, to use "in those days" (typically with the simple past tense).

"In this day and age" => OK

"In one of my darkest days" => "on one of my darkest days" / "in one of my darkest hours".
"In these days and ages" => No
"In these days, ...." => No
"In these days of ...." => OK

"In this days ..." => No

Yankee

Plurals, Tenses, Simple past, Past tenses

Angliholic

#456265 Sun, 23 Dec 07 12:43 PM

Hi, my helpful friends.

But does "These days" amount to "Nowadays/Now" since it is not synonymous with "Recently?"

Angliholic

Joined on Wed, Feb 14 2007

SomewhereinFormosa

Senior Member (4,726)

Without true love, life is meaningless and worthless since our physical world is nothing but a dream. ~~Angliholic~~簡瑞達

Yankee

#456267 Sun, 23 Dec 07 12:50 PM

Yes, "these days" (without the word 'in') is similar to "nowadays".

Yankee

Angliholic

#456268 Sun, 23 Dec 07 12:52 PM

Yankee wrote:
Yes, "these days" (without the word 'in') is similar to "nowadays".

Thanks, Amy.

What about "Now?" Do you imply that it doesn't equate "these days/nowadays?"

Angliholic

Yankee

#456272 Sun, 23 Dec 07 01:03 PM

Now is often more limited or specific than nowadays.

For example, you can say "We have to leave now." You cannot simply replace 'now' with 'nowadays' in that sentence.

Yankee

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