My wife saw this in an email message.
Problem:
The writer chose a longer adverb where the simpler one would suffice.
Explanation:
The adverb “firstly” means first.
Solution:
“There were first the Amerindian people.”
Month: June 2008
“One” as a Pronoun
Outsider's Perspective, PronounsI was thinking about this over the last few days, so I had to review a dictionary for the definitions of the word “one”.
A definition of “one” as a pronoun is an indefinite person of a kind understood by the context.
British English says that the pronoun “one” can replace the singular pronoun “I”, but American English extends this to replacing the singular pronoun “you” as well as the singular pronouns “he”, “she”, or “it”.
For example:
- “Mum was acting strangely, and one should have noticed it.” can mean “Mum was acting strangely, and I should have noticed it.”
- “It was as delicious as one would expect.” can mean “It was as delicious as you would expect.”
- “After the husband and wife had driven the Ferrari, each said that it was as fast as one could desire.” can mean “After the husband and wife had driven the Ferrari, each said that it was as fast as he or she could desire.”
There you have it — a pronoun that can be a first-person pronoun, a second-person pronoun, or a third-person pronoun. No wonder English can be so difficult to learn as a second language!
“Masonary”
MisspellingsI saw this yesterday at a website for a company named Bullion Coatings.
Problem:
“Masonary” — with two instances of the letter A — is a misspelling.
Explanation:
The website referred to “Masonary Effects”.
The intent of this phrase was to say that the company could apply an acrylic coating to concrete to create stonework-like effects, which gives us the solution — “masonry” — without the second instance of the letter A.
For fun, I searched Google for each of the following words (without the quotation marks) and got about the indicated numbers of matches:
- “masonry” — 18,000,000 matches
- “masonary” — 420,000 matches
This tells me that Web authors have written the word correctly vs. incorrectly by a ratio of 42.9:1, which is good, but the fact that the Web contains almost 500 thousand instances of “masonary” is bit disappointing.
Solution:
“Masonry”