Billy

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	578 reputation	bio	website		visits	member for	8 months
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Sep 18	answered	Usage of past participle in “He said he thought it having had seen my medical record”
Sep 18	comment	Usage of past participle in “He said he thought it having had seen my medical record” You might have some luck if you google "past participle" (not "past principle", though...).
Sep 18	comment	Amber or yellow lights @Pitarou: Strange. It could well be a dialect thing. Or indeed, perhaps 90% of my conversations in which the term has come up have been with my dad (who taught me to drive), and "yellow" happened to be what he uses. Don't know.
Sep 18	comment	Amber or yellow lights I am British, and I almost always say and hear "yellow" (but obviously understand both).
Sep 18	comment	“Is likely to be” vs “are likely to be” There is a book, there are books. There is a change, there are changes. And so on. "Are" is correct. (Okay, I agree that it's an odd construction, but the same rule applies.)
Sep 18	comment	The pronunciation of 'Aryan' @coleopterist: Then perhaps it's more accurate to say that English is not very consistent when it comes to pronouncing borrowed words correctly (cf. "lingerie", in which we typically get all three vowels wrong).
Sep 17	comment	The pronunciation of 'Aryan' I agree with tchrist. (The German word for 'Aryan' is 'arisch', which is pronounced with [ɑː]. But German - and, for that matter, Sanskrit - have little effect on how words are pronounced in English, surely?)
Sep 17	comment	Is it appropriate to use “the” before an abbreviation? The latter is more appropriate, but not because you can't use "the" before an abbreviation. For example, "I live in the UK" and not "I live in UK". It depends what it's an abbreviation for, and (in the case of names of organisations) how they choose to abbreviate their own names.
Sep 17	comment	What does “first thing” mean in “You can change it back first thing tomorrow.”? @Kris: and that looks like an answer. Why don't you post it as such, instead of being rude?
Sep 17	comment	Question about “either and neither” Both are fine grammatically, but A is now rather antiquated. I think it sounds rather unnatural nowadays. The difference sounds (to me) the same as the difference between: A) I read not a book, but a magazine. B) I didn't read a book; I read a magazine. A is old-fashioned and obsolete (or very nearly).
Sep 17	comment	What does “first thing” mean in “You can change it back first thing tomorrow.”? @Kris: it looks like a question to me, and a perfectly valid one.
Sep 17	comment	What does “first thing” mean in “You can change it back first thing tomorrow.”? Indeed, if he has the power to do anything that requires your password, then he probably has sufficient power that he doesn't need your password. By the way, I would expect a reply "first thing tomorrow" to arrive early. But I understand the sentence "you can change it back first thing tomorrow" to mean "you can change it back any time from first thing tomorrow" (i.e. you probably want to change it back as soon as possible, but regardless, that option will be open to you from first thing tomorrow). I don't understand it to mean "please do so as early as possible", necessarily.
Sep 17	comment	What is the appropriate construct for stating that “A and B oppose each other's positions.”? Or something like "recoiled in horror at". By the way, shouldn't it be "each other's"? (Each only has one other...)
Sep 17	comment	What does “first thing” mean in “You can change it back first thing tomorrow.”? Any time tomorrow morning or later. (Presumably "tomorrow morning" is something sensible, like "any time from 6am", rather than "any time after midnight".)
Sep 15	comment	How to read parentheses equation Also, don't forget that it's often obvious, either from the derivation or from the form, if your audience is sufficiently mathematically mature. If you're quoting a formula as "x plus a times x minus b", you probably don't mean x + ax - b (because this is not written very sensibly). But if you're proving a formula, and you have a sum of three numbers, and the first is x, the second is ax and the third is -b, then it'll probably be obvious from your explanation that x + ax - b is what you mean. Basically, assume your audience is mathematically literate, or write it down (or both).
Sep 15	answered	How to read parentheses equation
Sep 14	awarded	Commentator
Sep 14	comment	Which is proper: “to debate X” or “to debate about X”? What a bizarrely angry comment. I also think "debate about" is more common, at least in my own community (though you may argue that a community of British students is not any particular authority on anything). I find it hard to make this sensibly google-able, though, firstly because "debate about" is still correct when "debate" is a noun, but secondly also because "debate about" is clearly more colloquial than "debate".
Sep 14	comment	What is the correct way to mention an attachment? I might as well weigh back in: "please find attached x" is common in formal correspondence I've received.
Sep 14	comment	Asking someone to let you know something I believe the first is incorrect and the second is correct.