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Parpar1836 |
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Advanced Member |
| Editor, researcher, writer |
| Collecting cobalt glass, jewelry-making, funky and antique things, books |
| Female |
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Monday, June 30, 2014 |
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Sunday, September 23, 2018 10:05:17 AM |
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It could be a measure of quality, or simply prestige. While a generic brand of jeans might be of perfectly adequate quality, branded jeans would have more prestige, but designer jeans would have the most prestige. A designer who is currently "hot," in high demand, would have the most cachet.
With designer goods, buyers pay extra for the prestige accompanying the item—jeans, scarves, handbags, watches, or bathroom towels.
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It could be a measure of quality, or simply prestige. While a generic brand of jeans might be of perfectly adequate quality, branded jeans would have more prestige, but designer jeans would have the most prestige. A designer who is currently "hot," in high demand, would have the most cachet.
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With his background in business and economics, Charlie's purview is numbers.
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Thanks, Elorac, NKM, and RuthP!
The sample sentence is for a monthly feature in DEAF LIFE, to help readers who are confused or curious about written English. It includes a new vocabulary word, with etymology, definition, and context sentences, and a Q/A feature focusing on commonly confused words. The upcoming words are ensure and insure.
Even though I have several English textbooks, including a Quirk & Greenbaum, there are times I like to ask the experts at TFD. There's nothing quite like a personal response. Even Quirk & Greenbaum have had me clutching my head at times.
I agree with you that were does seem to be a better choice.
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Let me apologize in advance for posting a topic that has been quite well answered in previous posts. I'm in a hurry, so am taking a shortcut.
Which of these sentences is grammatically better? Which makes more sense?
None of the valuables, so far as I can tell, was insured.
None of the valuables, so far as I can tell, were insured.
Thanks!
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You are always welcome, Nikitus. That's the beauty of an online forum such as this; it's like a round-table discussion with a group of veteran English writers, new learners, and students. Anyone can ask any question, and the discussion is bound to be lively, with lots of helpful criticism.
The advice of Thar, Romany, and Palapaguy (and NKM too) is always sterling. In telling an effective story, less is usually more. Trying to pack in all sorts of details (not all of it equally relevant) into each sentence results in run-on clauses, dangling participles, wordiness, and confusion—things that skilled writers studiously avoid. But you continue to improve with practice—you are indeed making good progress.
I would also suggest reading outstanding prose by classic authors—Jane Austen, Joseph Conrad, Stephen Crane, Theodore Dreiser, etc. I have a particular fondness for Dorothy Canfield Fisher, and right now I'm reading Andrea Barrett's Ship Fever.
Hemingway is upheld as the exemplar of the minimalist style. I've read A Farewell to Arms and The Sun Also Rises, which are said to be superior to his later work. There is no need to imitate Hemingway's pared-down sentences, but you can read a variety of good writers and absorb their lessons—choosing the right word, shaping your sentences so that each sentence contributes to the story, using a variety of constructions, with variation in the length and rhythm of sentences. This, of course, takes a lot of work. Even lifelong English writers struggle with this . . . which is why we have that sacred precept known as "reworking a rough draft." But the results should look clean and clear, effortless. Getting that "effortless" quality takes a LOT of hard work.
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The young man had been welcomed a couple of days ago by the sector's street vendors. Upset by what he was witnessing, he wanted to go further and kick down the door of old Chuck's house. But he was stopped by a gray-haired salesman who had been peddling sneakers on that street for many years.
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I was under the impression (as Sarriesfan has noted above) that cats don't care for the kind of feed given to farm animals, which is why the Egyptians appreciated them so much. Cats patrolled the royal granaries and kept the rodent population down, and were rewarded by being declared divine! Many a farm, stable, general store, etc., has had a resident cat on duty to protect the grain supplies. Cats are carnivores.
Cats were tortured, beaten, drowned, and burned as part of the wave of persecutions of so-called witches, as cats were believed to be witches' familiars, agents of Satan (especially if they were black). Of course, the wholesale killing of cats resulted in an explosion in the rodent population, as Romany notes, which meant an uptick in the bubonic plague.
To read of the way people have treated cats (and dogs, too, for that matter, and horses, donkeys, etc.) in the past, and still treat them, is disturbing. It makes me wish I could go back in time and rescue them all. If I lived on a farm where stray cats came to linger, I'd set out food and water for them. But that's just my bias.
If you don't have any kerosene handy, try vodka. It makes a good impromptu disinfectant.
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The way you have it, with the comma INSIDE the quotation marks, is correct. Does anyone use the term "inverted commas"?
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Sanmayce, is that the same story that has been adapted thus? It's a tale of a greedy young man who discovers a leprechaun's treasure (IIRC, he bullies the leprechaun), and ties his red neckerchief around the tree that stands above the buried treasure, and orders the leprechaun not to remove it. Then he returns home to get a shovel. When he returns, he discovers that every single tree in the woods has an identical red neckerchief tied around it.
The motif of marking every tree, or door, or gate, to prevent identification by an adversary is also found in "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves," and H. C. Andersen ("The Tinder Box") too.
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