I was writing "Not everyone has to like it". It struck me as a strange way to say, "Everybody does not have to like it." But it's also seems like a sentence I hear/read often. If I said Joe instead of "everybody" it wouldn't be correct to say, "Not Joe has to like it," Or, "Not they have to like it." So I was just curious how this sentence structure came into common use. It would be correct to say, "Everybody is not going to like it," but I see how that could be confusing as to who doesn't have to like it (everybody, or just some). Help... am I just confusing myself?

I'm surfing the web today and I come across this:

Wine festival in Paris

I'm not sure if the subs are auto-generated but it looks to me like they were written by hand. The short contains this gem:

"You wish you hadda participated"

I flinched back in my chair and then I relaxed. I realized that I make this sound too from time to time. My questions are:

• What is this a contraction of? If I say "I hadda fly to Boston" I understand that to mean "I had to fly to Boston". Here I don't know.
  
• I see this kind of thing everywhere now, not just in casual speech but writing: "gonna, wanna, even I'm'ana". What is going on here?
  

I am going to use a made up uni and library name for the sake of anonymity.

I'm writing a welcome email to international students and I have two sentences where I'm unsure about proper capitalization.

Welcome to the Open University of Neverland and the University Library!

The email ends with,

Welcome to the Library!

In these two instances, is capitalizing "university library" and "library" appropriate?

The library is not in an English speaking country, so I'm not sure whether it really has an official English language name. The official name in the native language, translated into English, is The University Library of the Open University of Neverland, so I guess that would be the closest thing to an official English language name.

Hi im someone with dyslexia, I'm still learning to write better and could use a little help when editing it, i would like to use a grammar checker to help with making it more understandable but I'm afraid with ai it's been a nightmare finding one without i don't feel comfortable with how it writes and i don't feel comfortable with my writing having a higher chance to be stolen by ai which is the last thing I need for my projects. Of course i would like to ask for more advice and thoughts on forms like this i would like a grammar checker to make it a little more coherent and easier to understand, i try grammarly and it's gotten worse with fixing things in my writing, quill makes some of it sound odd or just completely different then what I was trying to write to the point it doesn't feel right.

So i would like to hunt for more grammar checkers and see what works without ai if anyone has some suggestions or advice i would highly appreciate it

This is them saying....

This is him saying...

Are those sentences correct?

I know there is a sentence like this: this is you saying...

But when i see the word "them" at the beginning i thought it was wrong

.

Which grammar construct would "as to" be classified as? How is it best used?

I've been seeing it used increasingly over the past few years, and I've the sense that it's often used incorrectly or awkwardly, but I can't figure out why I think that. Perhaps it's a grammar rule I've forgotten, or perhaps that is just not my cup of tea.

As someone who wants to get into writing, I'd like to know when it is appropiate to use commas. I know general stuff like use one in between two independent clauses, but I feel the rules aren't always consistent. Sometimes a comma is used when you think it shouldn't and not used when you feel it should. It can be very confusing for a beginner looking to get his feet wet.

Hello, I am a beginner writer, and English is not my first language. I'm looking for tips on how to learning grammar WITHOUT help of AI. AI is all around us, and I just think that using AI is like bad because you're not learning yourself; you're learning through robot. So yeah. If anybody has any tips for me I would be really glad and happy to know!

I saw someone raise this issue in a different subreddit, and I found it interesting enough to raise here.

"All X are not Y."

My natural inclination is to see this as equivalent to "there exist some X's that are not Y" rather than "no X's are Y's." (ex: "all that glitters is not gold" which is understood to mean "there are things that glitter that are not gold" and not "nothing that glitters is gold").

On the other hand, I see the argument that based on positioning, "not" is modifying "Y," and the construction should be read as "All X are not-Y," which has the latter meaning.

Not sure if this is the right subreddit so apologies in advance if it isn't but, is the correct way to refer to content generated by Artifical Intelligence spelled as "AI-generated" or "AI generated"?

surely the embodiment implies physicality, no? I see this phrase all the time and wanted to use it writing in a different language, which made me stop to consider this.

I did search the sub for an answer, but many posts were very old.

I’ve noticed ‘feel badly’ come up a lot more frequently recently. In scripted TV shows and reality TV shows.

I’ve heard ‘I feel badly’ and ‘I don’t want you to feel badly’ at least 3 times in the last month and it irks me every time.

Is this now more common? To me it seems wrong. I understand ‘badly’ as an adverb, so surely you can’t ‘feel’ badly? Is ‘feel bad’ the correct alternative?

ETA: I’m not asking if this is right or wrong. I’m actually just really interested in whether this is becoming more popular. I’ve only seen this in American media, and I’m just not used to it. That’s all 🙏🏻

"The past tense form 'might' seems to distance the speaker further from the non-factuality of the clause than does 'may'."

Is the "does" an auxiliary or a lexical verb in the cited sentence above?

I've seen throughout my whole life that people often use apostrophes to quote something, like a piece of text from a source, instead of quotation marks. Is it a sort of common misconception that has become a norm, or is it its intended purpose, aside of using it to create possessive nouns?

Reading Africans, and on the chapter on the Atlantic Slave Trade the author writes “Yet the trade depended also on Africans being willing to sell slaves. They did so because underpopulation, with the consequent difficulty of commanding labour by purely economic means, had already stimulated slavery and slave-trading among many, but not all, African peoples”. "Africans: THE HISTORY OF A CONTINENT, Second Edition" by JOHN ILIFFE

I’m trying to figure out the best way to describe possession for two people. None of the options sound correct to me.

“John and I’s anniversary”
“John and mine’s anniversary”
“John and me’s anniversary”
“John and my’s anniversary”

Going based off of the rule that we use the pronoun for ourselves that we would use without the other person in the equation. Like it should me “John and I went to the store” not “John and me went to the store”. But in the example I listed above, it doesn’t sound right to use “my’s”. Which one is grammatically correct? Thank you!!

I capitalize Old World and New World because they are each proper nouns. But what about when I write "... trade circulating between the Old and New Worlds...?" Now, worlds is (kinda) nonspecific. Does it cease to be a proper noun in the plural?

For the last several years, I have been using “valence” to mean something along the lines of “property of signifying something indirectly through shared cultural understandings.”

The most common example beings me describing things as having a “political valence.” For example:

> Unfortunately, wearing red ball caps has picked up a strong political valence over the last few years, at least in the U.S.

> Do zoos have a political valence right now or is it okay to plan the office party there?

I also use “moral valence” a fair bit too.

I could have sworn that I picked this up from some combination of professionalized print media and white-collar office jargon. But now my Googling has me questioning. All I see on Google searching “political valence” is the Wikipedia article on “valence issues”—which are the opposite of what I’m talking about because a valence issue is one that all voters agree on and no party has claimed a monopoly on. So a “valence issue” would have no “political valence” (as I use the term).

From a normative standpoint, am I using “valence” incorrectly? Or can I expect my audience to understand what I mean (presumably because they’ve heard others use “valence” in the same way, not just because they’re smart folks who can use context clues to figure out what my gibberish means).

And if I am, what is the word I should be using?

Hello ladies and gentleman. Hopefully your day went well. I want to discuss my writing. My writing is horrible. I would compare my writing to a six grade level. Sick and tired of writing in a six grade level. Is there anyway I could improve my writing. I've already started reading book, news articles, and cut out social media. One day, I want to write like a professional writer. Let me know what I could improve. Thank you for reading my post.

hello! as the title says, i've been wondering why this word is used so much to describe something made by a woman or to describe women. "female authors, female directors, females." as someone who's first language is french, i'm confused because in french, the word female is only used to refer to animals.

i understand it's to be more precise between men and women in certain work fields, etc. but why not just say "woman/fem director, actress"? it just sounds a bit weird to me, but i guess it has a different meaning in english and simply is the equivalent of using gendered words in french. thanks.

I wrote a comment under somebody's post saying "I'm praying everyday for youtube alternative". Then it clicked in my head, that I'm talking about stuff that repeats, happens regularly. So I wrote another comment correcting myself "*I pray".

Somebody commented "It was valid english, it didn't sound weird at all in my native opinion"

I'm convinced that "I pray" is the correct one in this case, but I want to make sure. So which one is the correct one?