I know that, like me, there are posters here on bit-tech that are not from either England or the USA, which means their first language is not English ! This thread is meant to ask questions regarding either basic spelling of words or meaning of some expressions that can be hard to understand for us foreigners The thread should also be meant to be raised from the death at anytime so I better not see anyone cry because the latest post is 6 months after the one before last ! First question : If I am referring to many people (as a group) that are 25 year old, am I supposed to say "25 year olds" ?
Yes, you would say " a group of 25 year olds" If you wanted to refer to a group of 25 one year olds you would need to say " a group of twenty five one year olds" to avoid confusion. Moriquendi
yes, if you needed to separate out all the 25 year old people you would say: "Would all the 25 year olds please come with me." or you could rehash "25 year olds" into "people 25 years of age" or if you are referring to only a group containing people that are 25 years old you could just say "everyone <insert command/statement>"
Now their's no need for that now, is they're? EDIT: By scary coincidence, I was typing that before Ghys replied
I'm just faster I would like to explain the difference between "their,they're and there" but as I started typing to explain it, I just didn't really know how to express it. It seems like figurative speech is still a little hard for me... I could explain it in French however but I doubt it would be of any help for people here
there: "in or at that place", farther away than HERE; referring to the existence of. their: "pertaining to or belonging to them"; a possessive pronoun. they're: A contraction made up of THEY + ARE, with the apostrophe in place of the A.
It just occurred to me, shouldn't this be called the grammar thread, not the spelling thread? [/pedant mode]
In fairness, isn't Canadian English spelling and grammar closer to proper English than their south of the border land-mass cohorts?
Yep except the the OP is from Quebec IIRC where French is the main language so we'll forgive him... for now. Moriquendi
What about punctuation and the use of capital letters where appropriate? I find it unpleasant reading long single sentence posts with no capitalization.
