In Constructions^x, Past perfect^x

Complete any of the phrases above by adding any of these: frightened of snakes, interested in science, focused on his studies, tired of reading, fascinated by insects, bored with grammar.None of the resulting sentences has a passive construction.CJ

Hello. Sorry to hear you're feeling uncomfortable with this type of activity. But you're not alone: I would be, too!The sentences lack context, which makes it difficult to tell when tense changes are necessary and when they are not (among other things).There is one sentence that is wrong...

Hi Anon, We are not particularly interested in finding if someone is happy with our answers. So “I‘d be happy if…” does sound aweful to my ears. I had made this comment before and I am not sure you were the same poster. But I would make another attempt to make this point. If you want to be...

Newguest wrote:I'd like to ask you about the passive voice. 1. People believe that the president was very shy as a child. The president is believed to have been very shy as a child. I'M WONDERING WHEN I CAN USE HAD BEEN?I don't think anyone has mentioned this. ...

The sole survivor of the car crash which killed Princess Diana said Dodi Al Fayed had insisted on the ill-fated decoy plan to dodge waiting paparazzi. Trevor Rees said he had had reservations about Mr Al Fayed's plan to sneak out of the Ritz Hotel. He suffered serious head injuries and...

Devrim55 wrote:If we ...........ready for the YDS exam decently, we .........at least two and a half hours a day for reading questions. a)were to get / should have spared b)got / would have spared c)are to get / had spared d)have gotten / would spare e)have to get / must have spared thanks...

My mistake. I, too, mistakenly read the sentence as ... since 7 o'clock until now. It was that construction I called redundant -- or believed at the time that I was calling redundant. But no matter. The version with ... from 7 o'clock until now is equally redundant, in my opinion. The...

"The Change of the Characteristics in the passage from The Hours" The passage from the novel The Hours by Michael Cunningham is intriguing. The passage illustrates the difference between the character's characteristics in different time settings: past and present. This difference is...

Hi Pres1dentYou should break up long posts such as this one into several short posts. That way it's much easier for other people to comment.I've made suggestions. Some of the sentences in these exercises don't sound terribly natural, so there are also suggestions in places where there were no...

Well, I was saying that according to that explanation the simple past would always be wrong in that construction. But that's not true, because if I add some info, the simple past is ok:Three years had passed since we had seen each other. <--- past perfectThree years had passed since we each...