female/ a female

I played online games when I was little. In those games, players can choose a character they like and decide what profession they want their characters to practice.

When I was writing this, a question occurred to me.

1. The character he/she used was a female
2. The character he/she used was female
3. The character he/she used was a woman

I felt the shorter the better, so I went for #2. However, the other two choices were grammatically correct as well. The answer I got was

They are all acceptable but I much prefer #2 over the others.

Today I found another sentence along the lines of ‘Maui turns human in midair’ in the movie Moana by the Pixar studios. I prefer using ‘human’ as a noun, but it seems for these words, being an adjective makes the sentence shorter and it’s also more common to use them this way.

Declare ANY belongings

“Two travel Youtubers are about to cross the Canadian border in their van. A customs officer stops their vehicle for inspection and asks them to declare their belongings that can harm people.”

You must have known which part is wrong in these sentences.

Generally you’re asked to “declare anything that…” or “declare any item/s that…” or “declare if you’re carrying any item/s that…

Hope/expect

” Hopefully, I don’t need to deal with any criminal behavior at all.” I believe most people want this idea to be true through their life. In a previous essay, I wrote the above sentence and a friend made a correction:

Hopefully, I won’t need to deal with any criminal behavior at all.

It’s not a general truth. I don’t know if I’m going to encounter criminal behavior afterwards. ‘Hopefully’ calls for a future tense sentence.

From Sentence Dictionary:
1. We need to be prepared to fight, but hopefully it won’t come to that.
2. Hopefully I’ll be home by nine tonight.
3. Hopefully the audience will dissolve into fits of laughter.

I used ‘can’ sometimes and I did find some sentences with ‘can’, but only a few:
1. Hopefully, we can make history come alive for the children.
2. We can hopefully reach some kind of agreement.
3. Hopefully a satisfactory solution can be reached without much blood letting.

I feel ‘hope’ is similar to ‘expect‘ which I wrote about before. The clause behind ‘hope’ or ‘hopefully’ sounds better when it’s in the future.

Leave for/to/with

“A man tried to pull a girl into his car after he asked for directions for the National Palace museum.” I asked a question about the use of ‘the’ on italki and someone suggested that ‘to’ was a better word, and this was seconded by another native. Preposition is really a tough lesson to learn.

In one of the responses, I found this confusing: “He said he would leave directions with you. Do you have the directions?” THE is specific since you mean the directions he left.

Why not ‘for you’ as in ‘I’m going to leave some food for you’?

Leave for (From the Free Dictionary):
1. To reserve or save something for someone or for a later use.
(I’m going to leave some food for you.*)
2. To set out for some destination. 
(I’m leaving for New York tomorrow.*)
3. To abandon one’s spouse or romantic partner in order to be in a relationship with someone else.
(She left him for a bartender she met on a cruise.)
4.To quit or abandon one’s job or career to take up a different job, company, or kind of career. 
(He left a lucrative marketing career for a chance to act on Broadway.)
* I made these two sentences in which ‘leave for’ is how I would use.

For #3 and #4, ‘leave . . . for something’ talks about purpose, so it’s understandable.

Leave to and with (From the Free Dictionary and Quora):
‘Leave to’ is used when a task is given to someone or something is given to someone, especially after the giver passes away.
‘Leave with’: leave an object or other specific item with someone.
(My dad left the car with me when he went abroad.)
(My friend left the telescope with me when he moved house.)

There must be exceptions. I’ll keep an eye out for them. 🙂

Report (it/x) to . . .

“A pedestrian saw it and reported to the police.” A girl was kidnapped and used a hand gesture she had learned from TikTok. Someone saw it and did something. She was saved by the police.

Is there anything wrong with the sentence? I should put an ‘it’ behind ‘reported.’

“A pedestrian saw it and reported it to the police.”

My idea of ‘report’ was similar to this sentence:
#You will report directly to the boss. (From the Cambridge Dictionary)
So I thought that I didn’t need anything between ‘report’ and ‘to’. However, this structure seems to work only at a workplace or when ranks are involved where the lower-rank personnel has to report to the higher rank one.

I also learned a few other sentences which I could use afterwards or I could have used wrong before:

1. I report for work/duty at 8 a.m. every morning.
   I report for arrival with a staff member, but the staff forgot to put my name down.
2. My neighbours reported me to the police for firing my rifle in the garden.
3. The inquiry reports (= will officially make its results known) next week. (I didn’t know I could write like this before.)
   The investigation will report next week.
   The examination will report.
   The analysis will report.
4. I want you to report to me on progress.
   How come ‘on’ is included sometimes? Here is an easy-to-understand explanation. Using ‘on’ indicates that the report may take a much longer time to finish instead of a simple occasion, if I understand it right. 🙂

Tense for Relaying a Story

The mastermind of the whole game also plays/played the game himself because he wants/wanted to enjoy the maximum level of excitement. Participating is/was better than watching in this regard. At the end of the first episode, all the participants that survived the first game have/had a majority vote to decide if they want/wanted to continue the game. The mastermind is/was the last to vote while the vote is/was 100 to 100. His vote will/would decide the fate of all the people there.

I wrote something about Squid Game and hesitated about which tense I should use. What do you think?

The mastermind of the whole game also plays/played the game himself because he wants/wanted to enjoy the maximum level of excitement. Participating is/was #better than watching in this regard. At the end of the first episode, all the participants that survived the first game have/had a majority vote to decide if they want/wanted to continue the game. The mastermind is/was the last to vote while the vote is/was 100 to 100. His vote will/would decide the fate of all the people there.

Do I need to change all the verbs to past tense?

Above I have indicated my preferred tense for all the verbs. # This is the only one where I prefer “is.” Here as you are making a general comment and not really relaying the story to the reader.

I learned that I could use the present to give the reader a vivid image of the story as it seemed that what I said happened in the present. However, it seems to be more natural to tell a story in the past. Less dramatic? Personal style? Maybe.

About + Noun + That/Who

“The plot is about that several people are abducted to take part in six children’s games.” I was telling a part of the show Squid Game. I felt it was odd but couldn’t pinpoint it.

“The plot is about several people who are abducted to take part in six children’s games” is a more natural sounding sentence.

1. The next story is about people who have a disease called ‘Blood Rust’
2. The story is about people who would never steal from their neighbors but who find it reasonable to use the levers of government to convert the property of others to serve their own desired ends .
3. when a story is about something that people know, or deals with situations or emotions for which they have a strong attachment, people build affinity with what they are hearing.
4. The story is about something that affects them directly.
5.  the story is about something that worked in the lab but hasn’t been tried yet in patients

However, I can’t find sentences using “about something which” and “about someone that.” I used to learn that ‘that’ and ‘which’/’that’ and ‘who’ are interchangeable while that is the more official word. Now, I feel it seems not to be the case here.

A Dummy IT

“The immunity against shingles declines with age to a level that it no longer provides any protection.”

Originally, I wanted to say, ‘The level can’t provide any protection,’ so I used ‘that’ as a relative pronoun. The sentence was corrected as above. What I gathered was that I should have said, ‘the immunity at that level no longer provides any protection.’

I was quite sure this sentence was fine as it was. Haha….Keep learning.

Insurance Cover

“How do they buy insurance for each student? If they don’t, then how do they charge parents for insurance premiums every month? If a boy is hurt, how will they compensate him for his injury without an insurance plan [without insurance cover]?” Some preschools were caught violating the teacher-student ratio regulation and it puzzled me.

When I bought an health insurance plan, I received insurance coverage for accidents, disease treatments, and hospitalizations. So I thought an insurance plan was equal to insurance cover. It seems that when I have an insurance plan, I do get insurance cover. However, in some simple situations, using insurance cover or simply insurance is more idiomatic.

You are not wrong to say insurance plan. But I feel an insurance plan is something more complex. Something we might buy for ourselves or for our family like a life insurance policy or health insurance. In the plan, maybe you have to make regular premium payments and the coverage is extensive to include things like dental, optometrist, hospitalisation cover, death etc. And maybe you even receive bonuses when the policy matures after several years. Insurance cover on the other hand is more simple where it may be just to cover against accidents, deaths, damage, liability that sort of thing. Just like car insurance, I would not say I’m going to buy an insurance plan for my car. I will just say I’m going to buy insurance or insurance cover for my car.

Past Tense with a Model Verb

Thinking about the incident, of the six missing people, two were adults. That’s to say, even a grown-up couldn’t make a correct judgement about whether they should trudge into the mountains as planned or abort the hike and head back.

I wrote about a flash flooding incident in which there were six people missing. However, I hesitated about how I should write the sentence. I think I had many choices.

1. That’s to say, even a grown-up couldn’t make a correct judgement about whether they should trudge into the mountains as planned or abort the hike and head back.

2. That’s to say, even a grown-up couldn’t make a correct judgement about whether they should trudge into the mountains as had planned or abort the hike and head back. (X)

3.  That’s to say, even a grown-up couldn’t have made a correct judgement about whether they should trudge into the mountains as planned or abort the hike and head back.

4.  That’s to say, even a grown-up couldn’t have made a correct judgement about whether they should trudge into the mountains as had planned or abort the hike and head back. (X)

5. That’s to say, even a grown-up couldn’t have made a correct judgement about whether they should trudge into the mountains as had been planned/as they had planned or abort the hike and head back.

If I could rewrite it again, I would probably choose sentence 3 or 5. ‘Couldn’t make a correct judgement‘ could talk about a current or future situation while ‘couldn’t have made a correct judgement‘ means that I was talking about a past event. My language partner told me that actually both of them meant the same thing in this context. Besides, I tried to use ‘as had planned’, but it’s not idiomatic.

One more thing: I was taught that ‘whether/if’ could be followed with ‘or not’ optionally. However, it seems it sounds better to have it than not.