Help with English

There is really no difference. "An" is more logical, because we are only talking about a single city.

However, as I've said before, English is full of idioms that are not logical. Before the word "average," most of us would use "the" instead of "an."

• The average American family consists of 1.5 adults and two children.
• The average "house cat" in reality is allowed to roam outdoors, resulting in the deaths of several billion birds every year: an environmental crisis.
• The income of the average American corporate leader is 200 times the income of the average employee. In Germany the average corporate leader's income is only 10 times the average employee's income. This is a major reason that Germans are somewhat happier with their economy than Americans.

Since the sentences you ask us to investigate came before this request, you should have written "between the preceding," not "the following." "Precede" means "to come before" and "follow" means "to come after."

Also, you should say "explain to me," not "explain me." To "explain me" means to analyze my behavior in order to understand why I do the things I do.

More: "readily and kindly" is very formal, old-fashioned English. No one speaks or talks this way anymore--especially in the United States, a very informal environment.

If you wish to be extremely polite you can say, "Would you kindly explain..." But ordinarily we say merely, "Would you please explain..." or the even shorter version: "Please explain..."

 

This means, literally "MANY of his books," but not ALL of them. Not, necessarily, even MOST of them.

This, on the other hand, refers to ALL of his books, and also gives us the information that he wrote MANY books.

This is wrong. Perhaps you mean to say "many books BY him" (or by John). I have read many books by Alan Dean Foster.

"By himself" is wrong, unless you are saying something like, "My little boy has read many books by himself," meaning that he read them without your help.

 

The example here is a bit confusing because "the average American city" is an abstraction that doesn't actually exist except as a conceptual collection of data.

If we have a particular statistical model in mind, then it is fair to talk about the average city, because there's only one average city under consideration.

On the other hand if we want to talk about some common characteristic that applies to any given American city, then we can legitimately write "An American city requires ...". In this case, "An American city" can legitimately stand in for "New York" or "Atlanta" of whatever you like. Whereas "the average American city" cannot refer to either of those real cities if the statistical "average" model under consideration includes particular statistics that are not true for either New York or Atlanta taken individually.

 

Sorry, we don't use that expression in the USA, so I don't know what it means. I can't find it in any dictionary.

In America we use the idiom "in and out" or "in-and-out." It's almost the opposite of "thorough" because it refers to a process that is completed very quickly, almost perfunctorily.

The city building inspector came out today to inspect our company's new office building. Someone must have paid him a bribe, or else he's a relative of the company president, because he was in and out in only fifteen minutes.

One of America's most popular fast food outlets is the In-N-Out Burger chain. The first one was built in California in 1948, and it was the first drive-through hamburger stand in the state. The name "in and out" represents the ability of the customer to drive his car right up to a window, order food from an employee, then drive to the next window to receive the food from another employee and pay for it, then drive away.

[Today the company has almost 300 outlets throughout the southwestern USA. It is consistently rated as one of the country's most popular places to buy a hamburger, and it pays higher wages to its employees than most of its competitors. The company is still owned by members of the original family who founded it.

And it is still a drive-through restaurant, although now most of them have a few indoor tables for people who want to eat their food while it's still hot.]

 

Concatenating the second phrase, after a semicolon, makes the sentence longer, but there's nothing wrong with it. If you cut it off and make it a separate sentence, you have to rephrase it: "Its farms produce..."

A. is a little more literary, even poetic.

However, as a Maryland resident and a professional writer and editor, if I were editing this writing, I would tighten it up, and at the same time introduce important information sooner:

Across the Chesapeake Bay from Maryland's population centers lies the state's Eastern Shore. Its farms produce beans, tomatoes, and other garden vegetables, and its beaches and its bayside towns with their night life are popular recreation areas for both residents and tourists.

 

This is the correct way. "Have/has to" is equivalent to "must" or "should."

However, you need to be more careful in your writing. You should have written "250 words," not "250 word," since it has to be in the plural.

You have made several mistakes in this question.

• You should say "tell me which one you use," not "tell me which one do you use." If you're asking me the question directly, then you can say, "Which one do you use?" But if you're embedding the question in a longer sentence, the grammar must be simplified.
• "Are they mean the same thing" is wrong. The correct form is "do they mean the same thing?"
• But this leads to an error in parallel construction. The questions, "Which one you use," and "Do they mean the same thing," do not have the same syntax (a fancy word for "structure"). The first is a phrase which can only be used as part of a sentence, whereas the second is a complete sentence. So the second one should be made into a phrase too: "whether they mean the same thing." (In colloquial speech we often say "if" instead of "whether," but I'm trying to teach you proper formal speech.)

So the corrected question is, "Could you kindly tell me which one to use, and whether they mean the same thing?"

"Has to be able" is a phrase that is customarily only used in speech. You might see it in informal writing, such as a letter to your sister explaining how difficult it is to qualify for a good job in America. But in formal writing, Kiteman is correct. "Must" is more formal than "has to."

"Shall" is a formal word that is not often used in American English. The reason is that its proper usage is confusing.

• In the first person (I/we) it forms the future indicative mode. "I shall come to your party on Friday" is an affirmative statement, saying that you will, in fact, be at the party. "I will come to your party" is in the imperative mode, a statement of obligation, meaning that custom and courtesy dictate that you should come to the party, but you might be a jerk and stay home. But "shall" is seldom used this way anymore. The most famous instance that all Americans know is the song "We Shall Overcome," meaning, "This is America and we do not practice racism." Ironically, it would be more proper to use "will," because 50 years later, racism has unfortunately not yet been overcome. It's not an observation, it's a promise, and one that we have not yet fulfilled.

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• But in the second person (you/thou) and the third person (he/she/it/they), it's backwards. Shall forms the imperative mode, and will is the indicative. "You shall not be late" means that if you're late you will be punished. "You will not be late" means that I know you are reliable so I'm sure you'll arrive on time.

The Ten Commandments in the old-fashioned King James translation of the Bible into English are full of this construction. Thou shalt not kill is God speaking, telling you that if you kill someone, you will be punished very severely.

In that era, English verb conjugations were more complicated. There was a special inflection for the second person singular: thou goest, thou hast, thou art, etc. Today only the Quakers (a modern, pacifist, anti-racist Christian group, formally called "The Religious Society of Friends") still use that form, and they have mangled it. Instead of "thou art" they say "thee are."

 

Best: "The most self-interested thing I can do is to be unselfish." This is the way you should construct this sentence in writing.

Second best: "The most self-interested thing I can do is be unselfish." This would be acceptable in casual speech, but it should never be used in writing or in formal speech.

Wrong: "The most self-interested thing I can do is being unselfish." This is never correct under any circumstances, even in slang. To speak this way would immediately identify you as a non-native speaker.

 

Please pay more attention to your spelling. The correct spelling of this word is summary.

And nobody in the USA uses the word "learnt." Just "learned."

No. And again: watch your spelling. You want the word "interchangeable," because it is an adjective, which goes with nouns. "Interchangeably" is an adverb, which goes with verbs and adjectives.

This is much too complicated to give a complete answer.

Correct. "Is to be" (also "will be") means that it will happen and we may never even know the reason. "Has to be" means that it should happen and somebody had better get started on making it happen!

Because "is" and "to" are very short words, leaving a lot of space in the headline for other words. In normal writing, and in speech, that isn't such an important consideration.

Newspaper headlines almost comprise a separate dialect of English.

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No such distinction in American dialect. We more often say "has to" in casual speech.

Yes.

Watch your grammar. "the following usage," not "using." And also your spelling. "Informal," not "in formal."

In America this would be regarded as formal writing. Informal would be something like "the weapons are going to be moved to a...

In America, "have to" and "ought to" are more informal than "must." Even more informal is "have got to," which is only for very colloquial conversation.

These sentences are equivalent, despite the difference in word order.

BTW, in America we don't commonly use the word "translocate." We just say "move." In casual speech, we might even say "schlep," a Yiddish word that has become very popular because it sounds funny. We are not a very formal people. That's why we don't have a Queen.

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