By Tenses, Dates

U.S. presidential elections are held every four years. The election day is decided (semantic problem: sounds like the date, not the election, is decided in November) on the first Tuesday in November. The reason why the election day was chosen on November is (tense) that farmers would finish...

Hello MrP History of English Gerunds (quoted from OED) The most notable development of the verbal nouns in form of -ing is its use as a gerund, i.e. a substantive with certain verbal functions, particularly those of being qualified by an adverb instead of an adjective, and of governing an...

funny you ask.....but let me ask you this first: 1) Are you under a pretense of having a 'bad experience' and wish to find out about others to overshadow your own experience, in other words, hear the worse so yours doesn't sound so bad? 2) You met someone. You like this guy, but the nagging...

You have the right meaning but wrong tense! We are asking 'What have you been doing?' In other words, what have you been doing lately, anything interesting/out of the ordinary/just the same old grind? It means update me on your life. If you are a child though, we would normally ask this and...

I'm no marker, sorry. You make the mistake most CE candidates make: making your sentences and wording more complicated than necessary. Markers reward simple and correct English, if memory serves. he rapid development of both economy and industry fields sparks off a great demand of paper. Paper...

Hi Guest, All indeed acceptable, and dependent on the nuance you wish to communicate. This is a question I really should leave to California Jim, but I will get a start on it by presenting some loosely-quoted extracts from the viewpoints of Michael Lewis: 1. 'I will start my new job on...

Hi everyone, I need to place about 12 working adults into three different groups (mostly beginning and intermediate, maybe a couple of advanced students). I don't need a highly detailed placement exam, because I can only divide the group into three very broad levels. I was thinking of doing the...

Andrei, I know you usually worry aobut the correct use of capitalisation, and your posts are great help. I seldom comment on it myself because I know that many people deliberately avoid using capitals in message forums, emails, chatrooms. It seems to be an accepted convention. Your reminders,...

Miriam, Many thanks for your thoughtful expansion of Pem's analysis. I'll first address the specific questions you've raised, then re-state more thoroughly the case which the Cambridge book is making for the gerund's redefinition. Consider the following two sentences: 1. I can't stand your...

Hmm. I’m not sure if 10,000 people haven’t already read these love letters. Maybe I should change a few words to make them a little more personal. They’re all dedicated to my bestest hound dog, Bogie Here’s the original from the...