Discussion Groups / English Usage / December 2009

The following sentence is from an article published in _American
Scientist_, July 1956, ceremonially reprinted in the latest issue:
 The latter variations are relatively constant over long time
 intervals compared to the former.

     I would like to know if it is appropriate to refer to a man as
"male", and a woman as "female".
     Can anybody tell me if the following two sentences are right?
   1.   More males like to play basketball than females.

I don't understand the "run" and "roll over" in
the following two sentences. Please illuminate
their meanings for me. Many thanks!
"I think right now every vulnerable country has

In this sentence:
"The hospital serves 153,000 outpatients a year."
would you change "a year" to "per year"? Or is "a year" perfectly
acceptable?

A holiday competition: write a sentence of up to 140 characters in which...
http://queeze.blogspot.com/2009/12/twitter-competition-1.html
Adrian

This is not a usage question, so it's a little off topic---sorry! But,
I hope someone can help.
When using Chicago-style citation for a bibliography, should I use
"privately printed" when the author is the publisher, when the work is

Here is the question
I remembered to mail the letters. - Correct.
You seem to have put up on weight. - Correct.
I would like to have seen the film when I was in India. - Correct.

Here it is:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/worklife/12/16/cb.worst.phrases.work/index.html
Any thoughts/additions/deletions?
Thanks in advance....

A paragraph in the book I'm copyediting has this sentence: "More women
than men tend to become redundant."
I don't quite understand what this means. That there are more women
than men? Wouldn't it be easier to state, "Often, women outnumber

I read the following article, which talks about the popular
smartphones. Although my dictionary told me "downright" (In the last
sentence below) is a negative word, I doubt that it is a confirmation
word here. Right? Thanks.

I glimpsed a promo for Lark Rise to Candleford in which clock parts are
described as "sabotaged." Seems a tad premature to me.

Inspired by another thread I've just seen here, I have a related question
about the difference between the question tags in the following two sentences:
You've bought a new car, have you?
You've bought a new car, haven't you?

A student wrote that on her lab report,(*) and was outraged that I
marked it wrong.  I tried to explain to her why it's "between my
partner and me", but she had no concept of what a preposition was or
what the objective case is, so I finally had to refer her to a

1)I just love this flower.
2)I love just this flower.
Let me ask a question about difference between the two.
My understanding is like following:

1. I expect I'll struggle through until payday. = struggling in the
period before payday; payday provides relief
2. I expect I'll struggle through payday. = struggle on payday only
3. I expect I'll struggle from now through payday. = struggling before