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From: comm@zeus.bris.ac.uk (M. Murray)
Subject: Re: 1000 commonest words
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Date: Tue, 14 Jan 1997 16:03:25 GMT
Lines: 31

John Trollope (John.Trollope@Team17.com) wrote:
: 
: >The Cobuild Dictionary was based on their database of 40 million+
: >words of English taken from a variety of sources. 
: 
: >I believe in their coursebook, they have a list of the 1000 most
: >commonly used words as well as a false beginners.
: What a lousily written sentence!
: 
: "I believe in this coursebook destined for false beginners, they have
: a list of the 1000 most commonly used words."
: 
: That's better.

So you believe in the course book like you believe in God, do you? It's 
still lousy. How about

 "I believe that, in this coursebook destined for false beginners, they have
 a list of the 1000 most commonly used words."

It's based on the good old two-comma rule. In between a subject and a 
verb there must be zero, two, or more commas, never one. Similarly 
between verb and object. In this case the object is obscure, the clause 
"that they have...". If you want to insert a phrase (in this 
coursebook...) into the clause, you need two commas round it. 

Mind you, whatever are "false beginners"?


-- 
Martin Murray :: School of Chemistry, Bristol University, BS8 1TS, England
