whom just sounds too formal to use 99% of the time idk

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3198765&forum_id=2#30296757)

That/which is also tricky. I understand the rule and the principle behind the distinction, but sometimes it's still hard to be sure.

I never really know when to hyphenate compound adjectives. I always just Google the expression to see if it abould be hyphenated.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3198765&forum_id=2#30296901)

Purple-people eater (the thing eats people who are purple)

HTH

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3198765&forum_id=2#30297991)

>> I have very little time to learn the language: my new job starts in five weeks.

>> A college degree is still worth something: a recent survey revealed that college graduates earned roughly 60% more than those with only a high school diploma.

>> All three of their children are involved in the arts: Richard is a sculptor, Diane is a pianist, and Julie is a theatre director.

When two or more sentences follow a colon, capitalize the first word following the colon.

>> He made three points: First, the company was losing over a million dollars each month. Second, the stock price was lower than it had ever been. Third, no banks were willing to loan the company any more money.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3198765&forum_id=2#30298739)

>> After three weeks of deliberation, the jury finally reached a verdict: guilty.

>> Five continents, three dozen countries, over a hundred cities: this was the trip of a lifetime.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3198765&forum_id=2#30298752)

Obviously, nobody actually says "It is I" because it's too pretentious.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3198765&forum_id=2#30298044)

The way I learned the rule is simply to remember that linking verbs require using the same pronoun case whether the pronoun precedes or follows the verb.

E.g.:

NTCR: "It is her." & "Her is it."

versus

TCR: "It is she." & "She is it."

Re the subject/object questions you raised:

I don't think the formal rule for linking verbs is *really* an exception to the general rule, since I think it's remedied by considering pronoun cases in active versus passive constructions.

So in the example above, "she" is always the subject, and "it" is always the object; the passive construction just flips the order.

Linking verbs other than forms of "to be" include "to appear" and "to seem."

Definitely a good one.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3198765&forum_id=2#30298524)

I say "It is I", because I'm not some mouth-breathing Ivy League hick.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3198765&forum_id=2#30298596)

lay requires a direct object. lie doesn't. viz., you lie down on the sofa (no direct object), but you lay the book down on the table (the book is the direct object).

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3198765&forum_id=2#30298565)

lie past tense: lied

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3198765&forum_id=2#30298845)

Yeah I think that's when i fuck it up, because that sounds totally off to me.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3198765&forum_id=2#30298870)

in sum:

no direct object: i lie on the bed; i lied on the bed.

w/ direct object: i lay the book on the bed; i laid the book on the bed.

the confusion re "i lied on the bed" stems, i think, from lie's homonym meaning deception.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3198765&forum_id=2#30298942)

http://i.imgur.com/I0JxjqE.gif

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3198765&forum_id=2#30299304)

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3198765&forum_id=2#30298530)

Lay requires a direct object. Lie doesn't.

Viz., you lie down on the sofa (no direct object), but you lay the book down on the table (the book is the direct object).

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3198765&forum_id=2#30298591)

e.g.: She heard him say "I don't want any."

Should be: She heard him say "I don't want any".

e.g.: She heard him say "I don't want any," but he had some anyway.

Should be: She heard him say "I don't want any", but he had some anyway.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3198765&forum_id=2#30298557)

"I'm the new sheriff," he said.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3198765&forum_id=2#30298630)

"I'm the new sheriff.", he said.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3198765&forum_id=2#30298669)

shit like that.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3198765&forum_id=2#30298817)

The ostensible issue with dangling prepositions is that they are #notOK in Latin, and hence the "romance languages" that evolved from Latin (Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, and Romanian) similarly eschew dangling prepositions.

But English isn't a romance language. The Anglo-Saxons brought their Germanic language(s), which was interbred with the Celts' language, but -- most importantly -- Old Norse had a profound impact on what would evolve into contemporary English. And Old Norse had no problem with dangling preposition.

(This, of course, puts to the side the (later) infusion of words from Latin and Romance languages -- but Old Norse changed the grammar.)

>> [The Vikings' Old Norse] also left their mark on English grammar. Blissfully, it is becoming rare to be taught that it is wrong to say Which town do you come from?, ending with the preposition instead of laboriously squeezing it before the wh-word to make From which town do you come? In English, sentences with ‘dangling prepositions’ are perfectly natural and clear and harm no one. Yet there is a wet-fish issue with them, too: normal languages don’t dangle prepositions in this way. Spanish speakers: note that El hombre quien yo llegué con (‘The man whom I came with’) feels about as natural as wearing your pants inside out. Every now and then a language turns out to allow this: one indigenous one in Mexico, another one in Liberia. But that’s it. Overall, it’s an oddity. Yet, wouldn’t you know, it’s one that Old Norse also happened to permit (and which Danish retains).

As if all this wasn’t enough, English got hit by a firehose spray of words from yet more languages

We can display all these bizarre Norse influences in a single sentence. Say That’s the man you walk in with, and it’s odd because 1) the has no specifically masculine form to match man, 2) there’s no ending on walk, and 3) you don’t say ‘in with whom you walk’. All that strangeness is because of what Scandinavian Vikings did to good old English back in the day.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3198765&forum_id=2#30299245)

Some highlights:

-- When saying ‘eeny, meeny, miny, moe’, have you ever felt like you were kind of counting? Well, you are – in Celtic numbers, chewed up over time but recognisably descended from the ones rural Britishers used when counting animals and playing games.

-- ‘Hickory, dickory, dock’ – what in the world do those words mean? Well, here’s a clue: hovera, dovera, dick were eight, nine and ten in that same Celtic counting list.

Later French and Latin infusions give English a variety of ways to express very similar ideas.

-- Triplets: One result was triplets allowing us to express ideas with varying degrees of formality. Help is English, aid is French, assist is Latin. Or, kingly is English, royal is French, regal is Latin – note how one imagines posture improving with each level: kingly sounds almost mocking, regal is straight-backed like a throne, royal is somewhere in the middle, a worthy but fallible monarch.

-- Doublets: Then there are doublets, less dramatic than triplets but fun nevertheless, such as the English/French pairs begin and commence, or want and desire. Especially noteworthy here are the culinary transformations: we kill a cow or a pig (English) to yield beef or pork (French). Why? Well, generally in Norman England, English-speaking labourers did the slaughtering for moneyed French speakers at table. The different ways of referring to meat depended on one’s place in the scheme of things, and those class distinctions have carried down to us in discreet form today.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3198765&forum_id=2#30299277)

Dead serious.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3198765&forum_id=2#30299323)

In the Churchill example, the verb is "to put up with." This is one complete and contained "verbal" idea.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3198765&forum_id=2#30299575)

For example, if the next word begins with an vowel (e.g., "apple," "orange"), you use the "an" right before it. Rule can be tricky when talking in real time.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3198765&forum_id=2#30301616)