Discussion Groups / English Usage / January 2004

According to news reports in the Indy today, a vacation bus crash that
caused the deaths of several passengers was caused by a person, not quite
in his right mind, who was running across the front of the bus at the last
moment, causing it to swerve. They described him as playing ...

Headline from CNN today:
 "Girls safe as kidnap suspect shoots self"
Is "shoots self" acceptable English, a mistake or headline-English?
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I am reading some history and some novels placed in the 12th-15th
century.  The locations vary from England to Bohemia.
I need a source or method for determining the meaning of some archaic
usage's.  I also need in some case to determine the precise meaning of

I was reading a bestseller recently and there was a question in the
book.  Could someone help with the answer.  Here's the question...
1. Correct the punctuation in the following sentence:
"George W. Bush is the President, who in God's name,

Again, I have trouble with a phrase in a british book. This is a book of
self-help, and the chapter talks about how women sometimes give men a chance
because they believe that, although he is not exactly everything they want,
there is room for improvement.

I'm reading a novel at the moment, and there is a sentence that bothers me.
The sentence in question: "What had happened since they arrived that would
bother him, her mystic friend who tapped into the universal forces around
him?"

The next paragraph is an except from a news report.  Why is it okay to
use past tense 'said' in the first sentence but present tense 'says'
in the second sentence when it looks like he said both on that same
conference?

Is there supposed to have a 'to' between 'asked not' and 'be
identified' below?  A similar structure I can think of is 'he asked to
be heard / he asked not to be heard'.
As man who asked not be identified says

The word " raw " has various meanings according to my dictionaries.
 1 said of meat, vegetables, etc: not cooked. 2 not processed, purified
or refined • raw silk. 3 said of alcoholic spirit: undiluted. 4 said of
statistics, data, etc: not analysed. 5 said of a person: not trained ...

What are the rules concerning the use of commas? Sometimes I think I
use too many, but at the same time the sentence(s) looks correct.
Anyone care to share the definitive rules on this matter?
Thanks,

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1118437,00.html
--
John Dean
Oxford

sentence
a fresh water acquarium is easy to look after, inexpensive to run and
fun to watch
is aquarium the object and look after the verb? then what is the

What is the meaning and particularly the derivation of the expression
"cutup", as in:
"She always laughed at her father's jokes; he was a cutup, easy and
friendly and open."

Sorry if wrong group guys, but it was the first one i came across
What exactly does apropos of nothing actually mean, what context would it be
used
regards

Hello, everyone:
Re: The Quiet American, by Graham Greene
Would appreciate clarifications wrt the CAPITALIZED items:
1.