English tidbits

1. A, An or The?
"This little story should help you understand the difference between the and a, an: A man and a woman were walking in Oxford Street. The woman saw a dress that she liked in a shop. She asked the man if he could buy the dress for her. He said: "Do you think the shop will accept a cheque? I don't have a credit card.""
(http://www.englishclub.com/grammar/adjectives-determiners-the-a-an.htm)

"the" is definite, while "a, an" are indefinite. "a, an" are also singular.


2. can not and cannot
"Usage note: Cannot is sometimes also spelled can not. The one-word spelling is by far the more common: Interest rates simply cannot continue at their present level. The contraction can't is most common in speech and informal writing."
(http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/cannot)

Use of contraction is highly discouraged in formal writings such as essays or papers.


3. plural of TV?
"The apostrophe has traditionally been used to form the plural of acronyms, and TV is no exception to this traditional rule, in which neither possession nor missing letters is relevant. TV's is an equal standard variant with TVs, although the latter is more common."
(http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=1559295)

So the correct word is "TV's". I almost always use "TVs" though.


4. compared with or compared to?
"To identify either the similarities or the differences between two things, use "compare to." To identify both the similarities and the differences, use "compare with." In comparing with something, one finds or discusses both things that are alike and things that are different."
(http://homepage.smc.edu/quizzes/cheney_joyce/Comparewithcompare.html)

This makes sense although I've never been consciously "aware" of such rule.


5. signaling or signalling?
Yet another disagreements between American and British English, it turns out that "signalling", with two L's, is actually BE, and the other with one L is American. (http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=1095705)

It's just a pure coincidence how I came across this fact. I was editing one of the documents and noticed that MS Word contradicts itself by telling me that either of the spellings are correct/incorrect in different locations in the document.

The only feasible explanation is that Word spell check internally distinguishes different sections of the document and applies BE or AE dictionary to them according to the user settings. By copy-pasting different sections of other document files I've unwittingly embedded different sections with different spell check rules.

Coming from engineering background, I'm quite familiar with the word "signalling". I've always used the two L word with comfort, such that one L word seems and feels a bit awkward. Although I'm from BE background (Canada), I prefer the spell "color" over "colour". Whenever a word feels awkward, I assume that it must be BE. In this case, two L word was BE. Strange. So the main difference of AE over BE is having less characters? Evidently not.

According to the linked article above,
AE/BE:
signaling/signalling
counseling/counselling
traveling/travelling
jewelry/jewellery
BUT
skillful/skilful
enroll/enrol
etc.

My picks would be: signalling, counselling, traveling, jewelery, skillful, enroll
That's 3 BE and 3 AE spelling. (hm...)