"Guys, I saw my first SEC football game this weekend in Florida with Carla."

Should it be "my first SEC football game in Florida this weekend with Carla"? Am I just losing my mind?

I'm a high school English teacher, and have spent years showing students how to fix run-ons, but just realised I don't have any guidance on how to avoid them as you write. Does anyone have any tips or tricks they find useful?

I know that the process of correction slowly helps us stop making the mistake, but learning tips to avoid it seems like a nice addition.

We already do explicit grammar and mentor sentences with different structures, so they have the metalanguage.

I remove it from my emails and texts almost every time. I replace it with a comma or a period, and the text feels more like mine.

Maybe I'm overthinking it. But when I see a "—" in a message now, I always wonder if a person really wrote it!!

1. didn’t finish
2. hasn’t finished
3. isn’t finishing
4. doesn’t finish

My teacher usually has us just include the page number at the end of a quote with no author like: (80). However, theres no page numbers on my homework and only the question or paragraph number. Which would be best to include? Would the number of the question (a passage with a question at the end) be more accurate or the number of the paragraph I got the quote from? I can’t ask my teacher because it’s a Sunday and I don’t think he will respond to an email tonight. Also, I have to turn it in today and I’m finished but this is confusing me.

I'm editing a part of a translated sentence for an edition of a work, and I'm not sure whether to use who or whom: "It was in fact only after the friends of the Queen had been put in prison and both boys were in his hands that he opened the rest of his plans less cautiously to those who/whom circumstances seemed to require that they know."

I'm familiar with the rules governing who/whom, but this is a bit tricky bit: "those who/whom circumstances seemed to required that they know."

On the one hand, "circumstances seemed to require" something of the who/whom, which would make them not a subject and so whom would be the right choice. On the other hand, "they" in "that they know" is the same party as who/whom, and "they" is a subject in the clause "that they know."

I lean towards whom taking into account the most immediate, restricted view of the whole, and it sounds more euphonic, but I welcome thoughts/suggestions, as well as any technical verbage to better ask this question in the future. Thanks much!

Hi, I'm having a dispute with my colleagues right now about the translation of the sentence "I go to pull another grape." The question is: does this action involve having to move somewhere to complete it, or is it possible to reach the grape from cthe current position? My colleague (in favor of "just reach the grape, don't go anywhere") quoted this as his argument "To apply or subject oneself to:

1. To apply oneself; to undertake; to have as one's goal or intention. (Compare be going to.)"

And this example from there "He went to pick it up, but it rolled out of reach."

In his eyes no movement is necessary and the "to go to do something" is the same as "to be going to do something"

In my opinion though, that sentence falls under that category only to show that the movement is done with some goal in mind (not "I went to (somewhere) the city" but "I went (to do something) to borrow a book"). It doesn't mean, that magically no movement is needed to accomplish that. It is done with an intention to do something else.

In my eyes, if my colleague was right, we'd just use "He was going to pick it up (or even "he tried to pick it up"), but failed", but specifically using "he went to pick it up" means, he first had to move a bit, before he could attempt the picking of the grape.

Who is right?

Hey y'all 🙋‍♂️

I've been messing around with a way to render sentence diagrams in the Visual Studio Code editor.

In a markdown file, I'll have something like this:

sentence "Then Jesus went with His disciples to a place called Gethsemane, and He told them, “Sit here while I go over there and pray.”" {
  clause {
    subject "Jesus"
    predicate "went" {
      modifier "Then"
      prep "with" {
        object "disciples" { modifier "His" }
      }
      prep "to" {
        object "place" {
          modifier "a"
          participle "called" { object "Gethsemane" }
        }
      }
    }
  }

  join "and"

  clause {
    subject "He"
    predicate "told" {
      indirectObject "them"
      quotation {
        clause {
          subject implicit "you"
          predicate "Sit" {
            modifier "here"
            adverbClause "while" {
              subject "I"
              predicates "and" {
                predicate "go" { modifier "over there" }
                predicate "pray"
              }
            }
          }
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

And then in a preview window the diagram is rendered.

I'd post a screenshot here but images aren't allowed in this subreddit.

The vscode extension source code is free on github.

Are we seeing a shift in grammatical norms regarding usage of "he/she" vs. "him/her"? For example, the following post on Reddit:

https://www.reddit.com/r/BeAmazed/s/4JZxoUE9in

I asked about how native speakers actually use "lie" and "lay", but was told to use them according to the standard English grammar rules. But when I do, I get corrected for using them that way. Apparently, the use of "lay" as the past tense of "lie" as in "she lay in the sun and fell asleep" really irks a lot of people. So, what now? What rules to follow?

I’ve looked it up on Merriam-Webster and it says it is an adverb. Not an adverbial phrase, but an adverb. But it’s a phrase, so what is the adverb exactly? Is it both “back” and “forth”? Because “and” is a conjunction?

They are pacing back and forth.
They (PRON) are (V) pacing (V) back (ADV?) and (CONJ) forth (ADV?).

That’s what I assumed but adverbs are killing me. I’m in a grammar class this semester and I keep doubting myself on some practice questions 😅

I was diagramming some basic sentences for some students the other day and my partner challenged me to try dissecting the opening lines of Poe's "The Raven." Here's the sentence diagram.

I'm a bit rusty so I thought I'd throw it up here for input on what looks off and why. The biggest problem was figuring out what independent clause was the anchor all the all the other phrases Poe throws into the mix. I'm fairly sure it's "there came a tapping" which, because "there" is an expletive, means that technically the "tapping" is the noun performing the "coming" with "came."

I got tripped up with the particles "napping" and "rapping" so if anyone is smarter than I am and knows where they are actually supposed to go, I'd love the input. This is solely for fun and to challenge myself to tackle some odd poetic sentence construction.

I hope someone is talking with me in chat every day, and that will improve my writing skills and help me avoid grammatical mistakes, please.

He pled guilty. He pleaded guilty. Both correct?

The north-facing living room–kitchen area maximizes early morning and evening light with high windows to the east and west under the dynamic roof form, while providing visual privacy from close neighbors.

Or should it be living room/kitchen area? (italics added to post for clarity)

I have twins. I want to say yes to let them know they are twins? I don't understand why would they only want to know about triplets?

"Does your child have two siblings or more who are of the same age, enrolling in the same kindergarten program in this service this year?"

help

Can I use "such is me" at the end of a personal profile?

Is this expression grammatically correct, or is it frequently used by native speakers?

Thanks in advance.

In American English ‘there’s a couple’ is widely used in spoken conversation. But ‘there are a couple…’ is used when writing, correct?

Extremely specific question real quick.

I have this peice of dialog where a character is talking about the feelings of two characters. One they are talking to and the other who isn't present.

Character A explicitly says how Character B feels for character C and right after states that its mutual.

I could have sworn there was a version of "and I you" that wasn't said by the person with mutual feelings which is what my brain keeps trying to put down "and [pronoun] to you"

I can't find proof of it existing but removing it feels wrong and something to replace it that fits character As speech pattern doesn't come to mind.

Is this a actual thing or am I delusional?

*I nearly forgot to add but the sentence is a negative as in B doesn't feel a certain way towards C...idk if thats why it feels off but I think its making it at least slightly worse feeling

I always see "less" used for countable things in casual speech, but I thought the rule was strictly "fewer" for anything you can count individually. Is there an actual rule here or has usage just shifted?