Discussion Groups / English Usage / March 2006

We're getting together at 5.00 for early doors this evening, Tuesday
14/3, at the Lass O'Gowrie, Charles St.  Be there or be a rectilinear
and rectangular form of equal length and breadth.
DC

Could you please tell me whether both of the following sentences are
acceptable:
1. Please quote us your prices and terms
2. Please quote your prices and terms

A question from a non-native speaker of English:
Which abbreviation for 'hour' is the more common and/or the more
acceptable: h or hr? When the latter is used with a plural meaning,
'hrs' is used. Does that also apply to the former when used with a

Dear people,
I've been away from the US for a while. When I was growing up, you would say
that someone who was driving badly got his/her license out of a Crackerjack
box.. Is that the current expression? Somehow, I imagine people say that it

  Can I use a semi colon in this sentence:
   "My last visit  I ordered a couple of pieces of pizza around 12am; I
wanted to hit the casino again."
   I'm trying to pay attention more to commas and semi colons.

I used to think that the word "a.s" was simply slang for "buttocks" -
rather crude but not particularly dirty unless used in a directly
pornographic sense, much less so than the F word. However, in a
conservative environment such as in India, the word is often bleeped

In his book "Revolutionary Europe 1783 - 1815" Prof George Rude uses
the phrase "non-jurying" to describe the refusal of some clergy in
France to take an oath to the civil government. I did not find this
usage in my collegiate dictionary, nor in your web site. Is it worth

I heard one sentence:
"none of them grew up rich."
why not:
"none of them grewup in/from rich"

N + N = N (?)
ex:
menses + regularity
BR

I recently wrote a message on an Italian ng that made me think of the
usage of the em dash. I'll attempt to reconstruct the situation in
English as accurately as possible.

My daughter has an urgent need for examples of passages written in English
by non-English natives. They should be serious but open to grammatical
criticism. Such examples could be prose, user manuals, blogs or any other
reasonable passage.

I came across the following line of dialog in a novel:
"You've got the ward healers, the precinct captains, the ground level
troops"
Being a former Chicagoan, the usage jumped out at me.  The "ward

What does this phrase mean,could any of you tell ,me ? or ,how many meanings
does it have ?
I hear,read it everywhere ,but i rekon that its meaning varies with
different  occasions it appears in...

I propose that we henceforth use the initialism "OSA" to mean "on-screen
aunt".

About the movie clip Valentine has made such a tiresome fuss
about, I've received the following response from the child's
mother:
   The way I hear it is that it is me in the