Why to choose or Why choose? English Language & Usage Stack Exchange

But usually you’re not wielding a rhetorical jackhammer, so variation is the way to go to keep your prose from getting dull. Create your account and connect with a world of communities. Not quite as limited as how, however.How can’t be used at all as a relative pronoun;one may use that, or nothing at all, buthow (which refers to way) is ungrammatical as a relative marker. And these are nouns that could make sense with a Why relative pronoun;try it, if you dare, with nouns that couldn’t, like rock, salamander, or durability. Usual (pronounced /ˈjuː.ʒu.əl/ as in you) begins with a consonant sound and, as such, it should be preceded by a not an. You might as well ask why verbs have a past tense, why nouns have plural forms, why nouns are not verbs, why we use prepositions, etc.

Why do we use «-s» with verbs

In the rare cases where this is a problem, use the form that will be expected in your country or by the majority of your readers. If you pronounce the t as t instead of d in a word like butter, the rhythm will be out of sync with American pronunciations. This is the same reason Brits often pronounce literally, litch-rally or lit-rally instead of lid-erally like Americans. They don’t soften their t’s and the rhythm of the e is faster in British English. As a result the t sound is either emphasized or assimilated into the ch sound.

Here is a link to almost any textbook’s free PDF version.

Simply because that’s an integral functional part of the English language. I’m guessing by your profile name that your first language is Arabic; so why do you conjugate verbs in masculine and feminine in Arabic? It’s not possible to answer why a language works in the way it does.

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But adverbial wh-words — like why, where, when, and sometimes how — can’t ever fall into that category. They apparently only include relative pronouns that usually refer to an explicit antecedent, as opposed to those that usually include their antecedents, as do what (always) and where (usually). In your examples, those words clearly function as relative pronouns. Use a before words that start with a consonant sound and an before words that start with a vowel sound.Other letters can also be pronounced either way.

Why don’t most sources classify «when», «where», and «why» as relative pronouns?

Just remember it is the sound that governs whether you use a or an, not the actual first letter of the word. When can only be used to start a relative clause modifying a time word, and where a place word; why can be used only if reason is the antecedent. That’s why these pronouns are used so comparatively often to mark headless clauses; there are so few antecedents they can have that they can be safely implied and therefore not expressed. While many people prefer to avoid redundancy in writing (“Omit needless words”), a little redundancy is often helpful in speech to improve flow and to compensate for the vagaries of hearing and attention span.

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It’s because the ‹l› was never really there in any historical pronunciation of English. Eliminating ‘that’ before ‘Bob’ would seem to be more in context with the criticism of the way Bob sounds. There are many stylistic variants you can use to ask why something happens. They all mean pretty much the same thing; you just have to choose the particular flavor you’re looking for at the time of writing. The ball doesn’t come through the window of its own accord, of course.

I think there is no difference except that the first sounds more emphasized. Can you please explain to me the difference in meaning between these two questions? I found it like a year ago and have been using it ever since. I feel like a lot of people struggle with compressing PDF’s when uploading handwritten homework to Canvas and I think this would be really useful for them.

Because where, when, and why have very limited use as relative pronouns. It’s not unusual for oblique wh-words to have limited usage; how may not be used as a relative pronoun at all. Stack Exchange network consists of 183 Q&A communities including Stack Overflow, the largest, most trusted online community for developers to learn, share their knowledge, and build their careers. More important, why refers to an adverbial clause or phrase of some sort in the relative clause — certainly not a noun phrase — and therefore it can’t possibly be the subject of the clause. This is important because relative pronouns that are the subject of their relative clause (like the man who/that came to dinner) cannot be deleted.

Is it ‘a usual’ or ‘an usual’? Why? duplicate

We would normally say something like, «Why do the kids next door always hit the ball through my window?» instead, because to assign the action to the ball, rather than the people hitting it, would be strange.

R/PDF is a community for users to ask questions and engage in discussions about creating, reading, and editing PDFs, including the sharing of helpful tutorials and instructional guides. I believe the usage depends on what the word sounds like it starts with. One complication is when words are pronounced differently in British and American English. For example, the word for a certain kind of plant is pronounced “erb” in American English and “herb” in British English. So the proper form in America is an erb, and the proper form in Britain is a herb.

Why do we use «-s» with verbs

This use might be explained from a formula such as «How does it come that …». Connect and share knowledge within a single location that is structured and easy to search. It’s not a matter of redundancy; all pronouns are redundant, after all.It’s just that why is very limited in its distribution. Sometimes we use variants to freshen up our writing, or avoid variance to hammer home a repetitive point. If you are asking many why is an increase in working capital a cash outflow similar questions of this type in a row, you may repeat the same construction (anaphora).

Different English dialects have different rhythms for words, which causes letters to get assimilated, softened, and dropped. Flap-t (/d/ instead of /t/) often happens between vowel sounds or after a vowel and before a liquid. «why» can be compared to an old Latin form qui, an ablative form, meaning how. Today»why» is used as a question word to ask the reason or purpose of something.

This means why — or that — can be freely deleted after reason. I.e, deleting why in the sentences above also produces exactly the same pattern of grammaticality and ungrammaticality. As far as I know, “That’s the reason I…” would still be grammatically correct, but I can’t find anything stating one way or the other.

Also, If you say «today was an usual day», unless your pronunciation is extremely clear, you risk being misunderstood as «today was unusual day», which will only confuse your listeners. We’ve just gotten used to always seeing it at the start of a question, but it’s really there to draw attention. I’m on Win10, looking for a free converter that won’t leave a watermark and isn’t a «trial» after saying it is free on a lot of sites. Any help would be great and sorry, I saw there were older posts asking similar questions, but not sure if anything had changed or if there are newer alternatives.