Wordwizard

This is an interesting one. The simple and quick answers are that the sentence is, to my ears, grammatical, the subject of the subordinate clause is "the daffodil" and the grammatical subject of the main clause is "it". But the sentence is complex on several levels, and there are some who would doub...

I am sure Phil could give you a technical analysis. Here is my lay view. Both are fine. c seems to refer to the group whereas d seems to refer to the people in the group. Phil has been out of the loop for a few days. This whole thing with "and" and "or" is an odd one. When translating from German, ...

Strangely, I found myself explaining the term at length to a friend a couple of days ago. I've only noticed it being used among political geeks for about 5 years or so, although the term is older. While the term highlights a real phenomenon, it is hardly rocket science. And yet political activists h...

Yes and yes, although I think it is far more common to front "if anything" in most cases.

"Maintenance engineer" is also used over here (for the person who actually does the work). "Facility manager" is occasionally used for a person who arranges for tradespeople to do the necessary jobs.

I think I read somewhere (maybe in The Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language by Quirk et al., ) that there was a difference between: a) I saw him before he saw me. and: b) I had seen him before he had seen me. I think they said that in the second case the chances that he did not see me at a...

You have a mistake in sentences 3 and 4. I assume you meant "every one of us". Otherwise, sentences 2 and 4 are correct. It took me a while before I realized why you were asking what appeared to be such an elementary question. In your two sentences, the events in the "before" clauses never actually ...

1-4 are all okay, but I would always prefer something different, at least in speech (see below). 5 is probably grammatically sound, but it seems very peculiar to me, probably because the negative "should" almost carries the meaning of a negative injunction ("young people shouldn't start smoking"). I...

There is a myth among wannabe grammarians that you must not end a sentence with a preposition in English. This is, and always has been, a preposterous myth, but you will still hear it touted as gospel truth. Your sentence (a) is perfectly okay and would be absolutely normal. Your sentence (b) sounds...

For the intended meaning, you need the comma, as you rightly surmise.

And, as you surmise, it may be possible to build an obscure scenario in which the version without the comma may just about work.

Pottering around on Wikipedia (as one does), I came across this joyous piece of folk etymology: The songbird wheatear or white-ear is a back-formation from Middle English whit-ers "white arse", referring to the prominent white rump found in most species. Although both white and arse are common in Mo...

It is moot whether any word ending in "-ism" or its partner "-ist" ever had any coherent, reliable meaning to lose in the first place. They are all terms used to conveniently pigeonhole people, whether it be on the basis of political affiliation or on the basis of their (perceived) philosophy or, in...

2 and 3 are certainly fine. 1 suggests rather more forceful coercion than you indicate in your scenario.

Only 3 works. "to get oneself/something belonging to oneself xxxed" generally means that by clumsy or stupid behaviour, you cause someone else to do something unwanted to you (kill/arrest/demote). It is therefore entirely appropriate in 3, but not in 1, because nobody else broke his leg. It would, h...

None are unambiguous. "For" tends to suggest a consecutive period, but not necessarily. It could also mean two consecutive periods of five days. "On" suggests non-consecutive days (possibly recurring - i.e. every Monday). The omission of any preposition is only really a spoken phenomenon and is uncl...