The trouble with that approach is that it can't distinguish between bits genuinely writ by old Will and bits penned by someone else deliberately aping his style and using (as the chap behind this freely admits) entire phrases from known

From a strictly grammatical point of view, only really soon is correct because real is originally an adjective. In informal style and spoken English real is used as an adverb but it's a good idea to avoid expressions like real good in serious

Good evening, Mister Micawber, the pressure of other work has deterred me from replying to this message of yours as promptly as possible, so I intend to do it in the present post in order to shed light on some important questions.

can I start my essay like this?: "The Tell-Tale Heart" is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe first published in 1842. Yes, but don't forget that you can vary the order and include more descriptive material, burying the dull facts

Hi, santhoshboswan. Welcome to English Forums. Thanks for joining us. Your question is so broad, it's difficult to answer. Could you explain what kinds of problems you expect? In general, if you use correct formal English, you can't go

Thanks, everyone. According to The American Heritage Guide to Contemporary Usage and Style: With other punctuation Put commas and periods inside closing quotation marks; put colons and semicolons outside. Other punctuation, such as exclamation

Hi English offers the possibility to work around the problem of having to use awkward constructions such as 'he or she' or 'his and hers'. For example, instead of saying that Someone has left his or her car on the sidewalk , you

Jingtian, The New York Times style book says: periods and commas, in American usage, always go inside the closing quotation marks, regardless of grammatical logic. Another source gives this example: ...two complete thoughts joined by

But thechatpage is not for discussing style and grammar. In theory, it's just for practicing English and make friends. I suspect that discussions on grammar are usually found on forums. In fact, if you ask about grammar on TCP, they'll

But he gave me an F minus for the following essay, saying that it was "heresy", totally slating my work , as though it was written in Chinese instead of English. I don't understand the phrase in bold -- I suspect it's just