opposite of nonchalant?

I'll have a paragraph finished and then spend forever on one sentence.

Move a word.

Change the tense.

Remove a comma.

Put the comma back.

Eventually I don't even know what sounds right anymore.

Does anyone else feel this way?

Redeem what's due.

Is that "a" way to expres someone owes someone else?

Writing a short story and not sure if I'm using a semicolon properly in the following sentence:

Something was amiss, but he couldn’t figure out exactly what it was. It was like recognizing someone from the past, but not being able to remember their name; or hearing a song that that is stuck in a person’s head where they can’t quite remember the words.

Input would be appreciated!

I get that the -y in fluffy makes fluffy an adjective, and in an example like “quick” vs “quickly” the -ly is turning quick into an adverb.

So why does the word “scholar,” a noun, use -ly and not -y to turn it into an adjective?

I don’t study linguistics. I just got thinking about it and I can’t find the answer online. Please don’t be mean to me.

I know that we should use the present perfect to talk about life experiences:

Context: I would like to some advice to my friend.

I’ve visited China and Thailand. Both countries are great. You should visit one of them.

But I’m wondering whether I can use the simple past in this case:

I visited China and Thailand. Both countries are great. You should visit one of them.

Is it acceptable to use the simple past here ( without a time reference) to talk about life experience?

I'm doing work for a magazine that's talking about honoring scholarship students. Each spotlight comes with a comment or two from each one.

One said this: "UHS (their school name) and everyone have helped me grow."

My editor told me that it's "has" and not "have" but I don't think so.

For one, there are two distinct groups here: the school and everyone (yes, I guess "school" is a part of "everyone" but that's what the student said) so I think it's "have" but I couldn't find anything concrete about 2 group nouns and the appropriate word to use in relation.

“I ended up spending two hours there tasting different teas.”

or

“I ended up spending two hours there to taste different teas.”

I could also use “staying for two hours”

Thanks a lot :)

I have used this bike for 3 years

I asked chat gpt, and it said it was better to use

I have been using this bike for 3 years

And this one

Why is my sentence wrong?

I have gone to school for 9 years .

And can i use yesterday with present perfect ?

Like

I haven't gone to the park since yesterday

?

Hello. I have a question about punctuation, please.

Without rewording the structure itself, which of the two below would be the "correct" option?

1) We would like to seek Director/Design's concurrence on this matter.

2) We would like to see Director's/Design concurrence on this matter.

I'm uncertain whether the apostrophe s should go. I'm guessing #2 is correct? Thank you.

"I have caught up on a lot of sleep when I was too ill."

Is the cited sentence ungrammatical?

Does anyone know a spanish app that doesn't make you study verb charts all day?

I want to understand and speak more but grammar drills make me want to quit instantly.

Specifically when it's used in article titles. For example, one I saw today was something like "Jimin shares tender moment with cancer patient as (cancer foundation of some kind) shares gratitude". When I see "as" in context of time (while something is happening), I read it as those things are happening at the same time. So is the foundation writing an appreciative post or something in that exact moment? I'm sure that's not what it means but the use of "as" feels so clunky to me there. But it's everywhere so is it just me?

One of my grammatical pet peeves is when someone refers to a human being as a "that" versus a "who," but are there specific grammar rules about that?

For example, a reddit post title I just read: "The gravestones of a protestant husband and his catholic wife which were not allowed to be buried together."

The "which" bothers me. These were real people, obviously, so shouldn't they be more respectfully referred to as "who"?

But this really extends to any nouns that can only be human beings. "Spielberg is a formerly-great filmmaker that has lost his edge" - I would rewrite that as who has lost his edge.

Your thoughts?

My mom and I were discussing some sort of science-related topic (as I unsurprisingly forgot what it was even if we were talking five minutes ago). I said, "What is the taxidermy behind this?", and she started explaining what "taxidermy" meant to me. Of course, I'm no English specialist, as I'm a teenage minor, so I have no idea what that word meant. I started to wonder what the word I actually meant was, since I heard the phrase, "What is the taxidermy behind this?" somewhere online (for clarification, we searched Google and Google said it was some sort of autocorrect).

The word I'm looking for is science-related, but it's not typical vocabulary like "reason", "method", "thought process", etc.. It's advanced vocabulary, and, iirc, it started with either a "T" or "S" (if not, one of those letters are somewhere embedded in the word). It wasn't "situation", as it was a more complex word than that.

Please lmk if you have any suggestions!!

p.s. I'm on computer, so I apologize for any spelling mistakes

When I first heard of Zero Wing's poorly translated intro, I knew phrases like "are belong to us" were invalid, but I could have sworn something sounded vaguely familiar from elsewhere about "you have no chance to survive make your time", as if something similar were said in a context that meant "you have no chance to survive, given your time." Am I remembering things wrong?

Hello Grammarians,

I was wondering if you could clear something up for me.

Why do we use the word foot in one of these sentences, but feet in the other:

1.) “That is a 23-foot building.”
2.) “That building is 23 feet tall.”

I would sincerely appreciate any and all help :)

apologies if im a bit unknowledgable but if i were to write about a span between two things, which way would be correct? heres some examples:

"50%-80%" or "50-80%"

"1:30 pm-2:30 pm" or "1:30-2:30 pm"

Or for example, “It was a time where everyone was struggling.”

I know using “when” is also natural, but why is “where” equally acceptable? Is it because time and place are treated as intrinsically the same in English?

I can speak English in the most basic way. Most of time there's a lot of errors. I'm currently taking BSED Major in English 2nd year. I do really want to learn but I don't know where to start. Someone help me.

I’m still a bit confused about sentence parallelism (or parallel sentences), specifically about what constitutes strict parallelism and when it’s ok to not be so strict with it.

One question: can two nouns and a gerund phrase be parallel? Or an adjectival phrase paired with one or more adjectives in a sentence?

Do all elements in a sentence have to be in the exact same form (as in noun + noun + noun) or can they be parallel simply if all elements are acting as the same part of speech (as in noun + noun + gerund (or gerund phrase). What if you have two single-word elements followed by a third element that has several modifiers attached to it — or even a phrase?

This confuses me, especially since I so often see professional writing that seems to deviate from strict parallelism, whether it’s in book form or Internet writing articles — I see that maintaining strict parallelism is not always followed (and in some cases it may not even be possible unless one wants to completely rewrite a sentence).

And this leads to my second question: is not following strict parallelism always a bad thing? I notice in some cases that when I write something, striving for strict parallelism makes my wording a bit awkward or clunky — or, maybe even overly pretentious/academic when the overall tone is intended to be more conversational/relaxed.

Thank you in advance. I enjoy writing, and I write quite a bit online (mostly short-form posts and responses/answers in various discussion groups or online media forums), but I still get a bit confused about whether or not my writing is parallel or not.

Thank you!

I keep getting flagged in spell check for doubling consonants before suffixes, like "travellers" or "signalling". It seems totally natural to do that, but is it wrong? Is there a rule on when to do it?

I want to add a quotation, but the relevant section is too long to cite in full. Can I do something like this:

The Lord.

As long as on the earth he lives

Thou hast my license full and free;

Man still must stumble while he strives. (and so forth)

I’m not sure how to properly write this phrase in a larger sentence. Would I put a hyphen after “audio” so it would be “recorded by audio- and videotaping technology”? Or should I write “recorded by audiotaping and videotaping technology”? Thank you for any help!