Discussion Groups / English Usage / January 2004

There's an MS technical bulletin on new updates to Office 2003. Anyone who
has such items should go to WindowsUpdate (where they will not be shown)
and then select Office Update, as usual. These did not affect Word 2002.

I decided to use the http://www-lexikon.nada.kth.se/skolverket/sve-eng.shtml
web page to look up the Swedish / Norwegian word "amortering" to English. An
"amortering" is what you get from the bank when you buy a house. The bank
lends you the money and you pay back interest for the ...

How do you interpret the meaning of "more than" and "less than"? If
someone says "more than 30", does it mean a value greater than 30 (30
excluded) or a value greater than 30 (30 included)? If someone says
"less than 30", does it mean a value smaller than 30 (30 excluded)?

The phrase "homeland security" has become prominent since 9/11. The United
States government, in the National Strategy for Homeland Security, defines the
phrase as "a concerted national effort to prevent terrorist attacks within the
United States, reduce America's vulnerability to ...

I've noticed that English tends to have separate nouns for objects,
such as, "grapes" and "raisins" whereas French only differentiates
between "raisins"
ans "raisims secs."  Is there any reason for this?

I am using piece in a sentence as an adjective; is this permissable?
"To understand the substance of Foreign Policy it is necessary to
recognize the broad, expansive elements of the practice as well as the
piece elements."

How do you interpret the meaning of "more than" and "less than"? If
someone says "more than 30", does it mean a value greater than 30 (30
excluded) or a value greater than 30 (30 included)? If someone says
"less than 30", does it mean a value smaller than 30 (30 excluded)?

"The centre/center question is a good example of why this is difficult.
"Center" is a phonetically correct spelling throughout much of North
America, but in Australia (and I think also in England), the spelling
"centre" is a better representation of the pronunciation.

Here's some nostalgia for the Brits, a little education for the
rest of the world:
=====
It can be bought over the counter for about twenty pounds in

This is an self-introduction of my friend.  Could somebody correct this
for him?  Thanks in advance.
==========================================================================
I think I am suitable for the post of Trade Assistant.  I have substantial

I always seem to struggle with commas...
I know commas should be used to separate introductory phrases from the
main body of the sentence, but it's sometimes not clear to me when a
phrase is introductory or not.  For instance, which of these is

Presidential hopeful John Kerry's grandfather was born to a Jewish
family in a small town in the Czech Republic as *Fritz Kohn*.  He
changed his name to *Frederick Kerry* in 1902 and immigrated to the
United States in 1905. (Source: a Brandeis-U-linked page.)

Let me ask a question about the following sentence from a novel.
"We'll get some way on. The ship will ride more easily on a bow sea."
(p142, Tom Clancy)
context: The speaker here is commanding the ship.

Back in December I started a thread entitled "Could it be . . ." inquiring
about making a point with a question.  In the thread I said to Mike Bandy:
I want to look into this, but I will not be able to pursue it until the
weekend.

I write the sentence
‘More puzzling is the candidate's views on free trade.'
I parse the subject of the sentence to be the gerund ‘puzzling' (or
‘more puzzling'); the subject is singular, and therefore so is the