Hot answers tagged reading
7
At one time on behalf of and in behalf of meant different things:
on behalf of X meant “in X’s name”, “representing X”
in behalf of X meant “in X’s interest”, “for X’s benefit”
About 1800, however, on behalf of began to be used in both senses; and, no doubt in consequence, in behalf of started to fade from use a couple of generations later.
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6
A person who has a large vocabulary does not necessarily comprehend a higher fraction of all statements than a person with a small vocabulary; that is to say, some people with small vocabularies may understand what people tell them or what they read more quickly and thoroughly than other people with large vocabularies. But it is reasonable to suppose that ...
5
Obtain cannot take a that clause, so we obtain that is ungrammatical.
You second example is common in technical papers, and treats the equation as a sort of quotation. What you are saying is something like
We obtain "a squared plus b squared equals c squared"
where the grammar inside the quoted string is irrelevant to the main sentence. (Note that ...
4
The novel is about heroin and heroin addiction I think. I would assume the no quotes style is a literary device intended to invoke the author's vision of the helter skelter stream of consciousness nature of drug addiction.
Look at something like Howl by Ginsberg. You don't get the courtesy of a period/full stop for 260 lines.
It's a style thing I think ...
3
Just wanted to pass on a few reading tips before this question gets moved.
I encourage you to keep exploring writers of English until you find one that resonates with you. You might enjoy a writing style that is more precise or poetic than the long-winded epics you listed above. Try some middle-grade, or young adult books. There are a lot of great writers ...
2
Not really a Public Library, but you can might a few audiobooks on Wikicommons:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Spoken_Wikisource_-_English
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Audiobooks
There are also many spoken Wikipedia articles.
As Born2Smile tipped me, the best collection of audio books is probably at Project Gutenberg:
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2
You would not say "In the year eighteen and something", since that would not conform to the standard way of reading years. We don't put an "and" except after "hundred". In standard English we normally would say either:
In the year eighteen something
or
In the year eighteen hundred and something.
You could use "something", "thus and such", "and ...
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