festival

Ruttonjee — Sat, 06 Jan 2007 10:45:17 GMT

Hi there,

What preposition should I use with festivals, during, in or at?

Does 'at Christmas' refer to the day of 25th December? Does 'during Christmas' refer to the days before and after the 25th? Can I use 'in' to replace 'during'?

If I want to refer to the days of 24, 25, 26th December, can I write 'during Christmas'?

Simon

Re: TOEIC question

CalifJim — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 07:34:13 GMT

The idiom is to have [amount of time] to (do something).
It means that the action described by the final infinitive must be done within the amount of time allotted.

The students had one hour to complete the exam.
We have three months to install the kitchen cabinets.
Martha and Sam have only three days to prepare for the party.

Focus on just the amount of time. The amount of time can be expressed in several additional ways with the help of prepositions like since, until, from, and to. These prepositions are used to show the temporal boundaries of amounts of time, so the amount of time is shown indirectly by mentioning the beginning and/or ending of the time period. (If only one of the two boundaries is mentioned, the other boundary normally defaults to now.)

The students have had since last Thursday to finish the homework. (The amount of time is from last Thursday until now.)
We have until March 17 to make a decision. (The amount of time is from now until March 17.)
Martha and Sam have from Wednesday to the end of the week to buy the ingredients. (The amount of time is from Wednesday to the end of the week.)

The words before and after are used differently. They specify when in time, usually with respect to a point in time as marked by some event. In this way they are similar to expressions like at 6 o'clock. They don't specify how much time either directly (as in one hour) or indirectly through time boundaries (as in until tomorrow).

after the concert says when (with respect to the time of the concert), not how much time.
before sunset says when (with respect to the time of sunset), not how much time.

Consider what is wrong here:

*We have at 6 o'clock to finish the job. (at 6 o'clock is not an amount of time.)
*We have after Tuesday to decide on a plan. (after Tuesday is not an amount of time.)

It is possible, although less usual, to combine the two sets of prepositions.

The men have had since before the end of last week to pave the road.
Sam and Yolanda have until after the 15th to send the invitations.
We will probably have until just before 7:15 to get to the box office and pick up the tickets.
Jack has from slightly after 8 until five minutes before 9 to clean the bedrooms.

I hope this helps.
CJ

Re: don't got

CalifJim — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 17:27:14 GMT

I was distracted by the fact that the [ z ] cannot be written without the spaces before and after the z without creating an icon. I had to edit the post to correct this. By that point in time I was getting frustrated, and my parallelism detector got messed up.

Either in or of would have been OK, but I should have used the same preposition in both cases.

CJ

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festival

Re: TOEIC question

Re: don't got