#grammar question

[liminalmemories21]

Is rooves vs roofs a British thing, or just an old fashioned thing? Because gdocs really hates it, but rooves sounds right to me and roofs doesn't.

[reesespiecesofart]

hello, writing community! so, i got a question about grammar stuff. when you have quotations around something, but it's not necessarily dialogue, would you put a period inside or outside the ending quotation mark? take this sentence, for instance:

Sure, his life wasn’t exactly the “American dream”.

would it be "American dream." or the original? it's the end of a sentence, but i'm just not certain.

[psychosomatica]

Is there a rule for a/an if its object is an acronym or initialism?

[nicholasbritel]

can anyone please tell me if it actually makes sense to say "she didn't surprise easily" because my friend and i have been losing our minds over this but we're not actually native english speakers so i would love to know how it works. why use "didn't" instead of "wasn't" in this context?

[grumpyoldsnake]

So, a general poll to the void:

When indicating possession — in a grammatical sense, not a literal sense — how natural does the format, “The ___ of ___” feel to you?

Eg:

“The mother of Tom,” vs. “Tom’s mother,”

Or

“The birthday of Sue,” vs. “Sue’s mother.”

.

I ask because my hindbrain insists that “___ of ___” is incorrect, or at least very clunky. And yet I feel like I’ve been coming across it semi-frequently in the past few years.

My first thought was that people might use the format when the name in question ends in ‘s’ and they don’t want to bother with figuring out the proper convention. But that doesn’t hold up — I’ve seen people use it when the name ends in other ways.

My second thought was that people might use it when they want to avoid any and all implication of one person ‘owning’ another, but, again — that doesn’t hold up. The birthday example I gave above was a direct pull.

Edit: Third thought is folk with English as their second language, because I suspect that it’s a pretty common form in at least some other languages. But — yet again, I have at least one source where that’s not the case either. 😂

It makes me do a double-take every time, so I’m curious on others’ thoughts on the matter!

[corisanna]

writing/speech quirk?

I have recently realized that I have a tendency to omit “that” in some sentences.

“she realized that she must have x” > “she realized she must have x”

“it was true that he had treated her well” > “ it was true that he had treated her well”

“I have recently realized that I have a tendency to omit x” > “ I have recently realized I have a tendency to omit x”

Is this a common colloquial thing? If so, what is it called?

[theyuniversity]

Happy May Day, YUNicorns. 🦄

Try this grammar question. Click on “Keep reading” for the correct answer. 👍🏻

Because it’s between two options, the superlative adjective “least” is incorrect. 🙅🏻‍♀️Therefore, (A), (B), and (D) are all incorrect. 

That leaves us with the correct answer, (C). When we compare between two things or people, we use the comparative form (-er or less/more):

Between Jim and John, I think Jim is less sarcastic.

Between Tasha and Julia, Julia is taller.

Between AP Chemistry and AP US History, I think the latter is less difficult.

We hope this helps. 👍🏻

[educationenglish]

501 Grammar and Writing Questions 3rd Edition pdf - Web Education

501 Grammar and Writing Questions 3rd Edition pdf 501 Grammar and Writing Questions 3rd Edition pdf : Pages 176 By Learning Express This useful book is designed for anyone who needs to improve grammar and writing skills, whether at school or on the job. Divided into six sections, the book covers capitalization, punctuation, basic grammar, sentence...

Great book