By Conversations, Pronouns

Re: Possessive adjectives and pronouns, object pronouns for words such as "person, one, who"

English really needs another pronoun for cases like this! Traditionally, if the gender was unknown, the masculine pronoun would be used. In a grammar book from 50 years ago, your examples would most certainly use "his." Today this would still be considered grammatically correct, but...

Re: "as ... as" expression

Your instinct is right--the phrase refers to "last year's figure" but the word "figure" is understood and so dropped. So grammatically the spelling should be year's. However, it has become common especially in conversationto drop the 's, and that has slipped into...

Re: 'than' in a comparative sentence

It's very common in sentences of this sort to drop everything after the pronoun. So "John is taller than I" is the acceptable wording. In fact, in conversation many, probably most, people would say, "John is taller than me." To those folks using the "correct"...

Re: help me!!

The dialog starts with a greeting formula. Hi, Mark! starts a conversation with a known acquaintance, a friend. How often do you approach a friend and say 'hello' and then ask your friend how long he has lived there? Does that sound like the first question you would ask a friend...

Re: Help proofreading "A Doll's House"

I have underlined some problem areas: The Woman Within the Doll The Baltimore Sun wrote that back in 1879, “A Doll's House” by Henrik Ibsen “shocked and offended people wherever feet” (1031). This might have caused him to become the “half-drowned” kind of man, as he refers...

Re: Everyone does their jobs

Clive -- I agree that "everyone" is often treated as plural in casual conversation, and I might well say "everyone does their best" myself. But technically, shouldn't it be "everyone does his job and everyone does his best," at least in formal writing? I...

Re: When I see him/Tom

When I saw him, Tom was drunk. (I would never say this. It is not right to introduce a pronoun before the noun) Hoa Thai is correct -- if this is the first mention of Tom. However, if the other people in the conversation are already discussing Tom, it would be okay. Something like this: "Did...

Re: Please help me to correct these grammer mistakes(Important)

Each of the following sentences contains a faulty comparison. Rewrite each sentence to eliminate the error. a. The word-processing equipment in the direct-mail department op­erates more efficiently than the customer relations department. b. The production manager expressed greater...

Re: John met a friend of the man's

There are three ways to convey the idea you want here. met a friend of mine / *met a friend of me / met one of my friends met a friend of John's / *met a friend of John / met one of John's friends ?met a friend of the student's / ?met a friend of the student / met one of the student's...

Tricky 'Relative Pronoun'

Can you give me a precious tip from the following two paragraph? 1. Less than a decade into the new millennium, the separation between art and ordinary life is diminishing. ... Art is not a phase of life apart from the work-a-day world, to which one may turn in moments of leisure or...