Give off

After I grew up, I distanced myself from temples. Firstly, I didn’t like the smoke produced by incense sticks used in temples. It gave off a bad smell and hurt prayers‘ health.

I wrote this about two years ago and learned about the phrase ‘give off.’ At another time, I tried to use it.

I had a sensitive tooth on the left upper side of my mouth. The dentist used a device to test if the tooth’s nerve was still viable. She touched my tooth with a probe from the device. Once the probe was in contact with my tooth, the device started GIVING OFF* electric currents.

However, a member on italki suggested I use ’emitting’ or ‘producing.’ I need more time to get the hang of this.

Besides, prayers are what we say when we pray, not people who go to pray. I didn’t know it at all. Haha!! ‘Temple-goer’ is a better word to describe what I wanted to say. 🙂

I’m thinking/ I think

When I bought my car last year, I was thinking [I thought] that I would sell the car in 10 years and buy an electric car. As of then, electric cars seemed to be the future. Now I’m thinking [I think] that I may be able to hail a Waymo-like vehicle in 10 years’ time

People seldom use the continuous tense with verbs in the likes of look, see, think, and own unless they want to emphasize what they are trying to say. I thought what I wrote fell in that category. However, my partner told me that it should be ok, but using it in the present tense sounded more natural.

Someone came up with an explanation on StackExchange. I had to read several times to understand. Actually, I’m not really sure if I understand what it says. However, it seems it’s better to use ‘think’ in the present simple in writing.

Be Suspected of

When I was keeping this blog, I thought the sentences below were the same.

  1. The patient with fever was suspected of having a urinary tract infection.
  2. The patient with fever was suspected of a urinary tract infection.

Then I knew I was wrong. Recently I just had another question:

  1. Urinary tract infection is suspected of causing his fever.
  2. His fever is caused by a suspected urinary tract infection.
  3. His fever is suspected of being caused by a urinary tract infection.

Do all these sound natural?

It seems the subject is mostly a person, so ‘the patient with fever’ or simply ‘He/She’ appears more often than ‘his fever.’

https://www.italki.com/post/zAFUYn7SvenWig1sgoKwTU

short of / shy of

My classmate back in university was asking for one more scooter so as to take everyone on a trip to the mountains. He said, ‘We are short of one scooter. Can anyone borrow one like now?’

I don’t know why I still remember this. It was the first time I had ever heard this. Recently, I found that he put ‘one scooter’ in the wrong place.

It should be:
We are one scooter short of taking all the people to the beach.

https://www.italki.com/post/fEPXDZN2dMBmBy5QwAl0sg

take your time | take the time/take time

Originally I thought all three took the same construction until a few days ago. I took my sons out so that my wife could concentrate on cooking. When I came home, I said, ‘1. I took them out so that you could take your time cooking.’

Or should I have said, ‘2. I took them out so that you could take your time to cook.’ I thought the second was right because I was pretty sure about these two:

  1. Broken bones always take time to heal. (Cambridge)
  2. She didn’t even take the time to wish me good morning. (Lexico)

So I doubted my self and looked ‘take one’s time’ up:

  1. He took his time before answering the question. (cambridge)
  2. ‘take your time if you’re planning a big job’ (Lexico)
  3. ‘So they took their time before joining the party.’ (Lexico)
  4. If you take your time doing something, you do it quite slowly and do not hurry. (Collins)

So ‘take your time’ should be followed by a gerund or a conjunction.

At the same time, I went back to review some of my previous blogs on ‘time’:

  1. Tell time/ Tell the time
  2. in/with the time you spent on
  3. first time when/that
  4. in Time/with Time/with the Times

I still forget about some points. Haha…

First Place

“My school held a race and I WAS first place in the race.”

My son took part in a 60 meter running race long time ago. Students were assigned randomly to 8-person groups. My son won first prize in his group. He said the topic sentence to his teacher.

When I heard this one, I found that I didn’t know how to say this. Two natives gave me some suggestions:

  1. I came in first place.
  2. I finished first.
  3. I got/took/placed first place.

These sentences can be both ‘first place’ or ‘first’.

I learned another thing from the suggestion:
I won first place in the race. – probbaly not. You win prizes rather than places, but understandable.
I won the race. = was first.

However, I could find some sentences using ‘win first place’ from a sentence dictionary:

  1. Our school won first place for the pole vault.
  2. I won first place in the English Oratorical Contest of our university.

But comparing to ‘win first place’, there are more sentences with ‘win first prize.’ I guess what Nanren said is plausible.

The first letter is A capital

“The first letter of/for/in each month, such as June, July, etc., is a capital.” (edited)

Long time ago, when my son was taking a class and learning about months and seasons, this question came to me.

I like several sentences in the comments:
1. The first letter OF each month is capitalized.
2. The first letter IN the name OF a month (or any other proper noun) should be capitalized.
3. The first letter of each month is a capital.

According to Lexico, capital can be a noun or an adjective. However, when it’s an adjective, it is usually used in front of a noun, an attributive adjective, instead of standing along by itself. So,

  1. The first letter of each month is a capital.
  2. The first letter of each month is capital.

the first sentence is better in my opinion.

That Day or During That Day

“The traffic during that day was considered light.”

I was watching this video about autonomous cars. A self-driving car was confused by traffic cones on the road. Its algorithms had trouble figuring out an action for that situation. Fortunately, there wan’t too much traffic on the road when this incident happened.

‘During’ was crossed out. I still think it’s OK probably in other contexts. As the incident lasted for only a short time, ‘the traffic DURING that day was considered light’ is too general. After all, I only knew that the traffic at the time when the incident happened, not the whole day. Besides, ‘that day‘ standing by itself is much more natural in English.

She is Ranked

  1. Her hard work earned her the number 10 ranking in the women’s singles tennis.
  2. Her ranking in the women’s singles tennis is NUMBER TEN.
  3. Her ranking in the women’s singles tennis is TENTH.
  4. Her ranking in the women’s singles tennis is NUMBER TEN.

In Mandarin, I feel these are how it would be expressed. However, it’s better to use the person as the subject of a sentence where I want to express the idea.

She is ranked number 10 in women’s tennis.
She is ranked 10th in women’s tennis.

That being said, I did find the sentence below:
Her ranking drifted to 133 but she entered Wimbledon a wild card.

https://www.italki.com/post/MBRV58DtCW4rvYMCjpLide