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- Why it is vs Why is it - English Language Usage Stack Exchange
The question: "Why is [etc ]" is a question form in English: Why is the sky blue? Why is it that children require so much attention? Why is it [or some thing] like that? When that form is put into what is called indirect speech, it becomes: Please tell me why the sky is blue Please tell me why children require so much attention
- Contextual difference between That is why vs Which is why?
You never know, which is why but You never know That is why And goes on to explain: There is a subtle but important difference between the use of that and which in a sentence, and it has to do primarily with relevance Grammarians often use the terms "restrictive" and "non-restrictive" when it comes to relative clauses
- The whys and the hows - English Language Usage Stack Exchange
The rule on apostrophes on plurals applies if the word in question is a bona fide word as a plural My dictionary shows the plural of "why" with a simple "s " Ditto other words such as "wheres" "hows" "buts" "wherefores" "ands" and "ifs" but, oddly, no "therefores "
- grammar - Is For why improper English? - English Language Usage . . .
"For why" (also hyphenated or written as one word) meaning "why" as a direct interrogative was used in Old and Middle English (see the MED's entry), but it became obsolete sometime around the year 1500 Other senses of the expression (for example, it was used as a conjunction meaning "because") gradually over time all dropped out of use, so the
- Using hundreds to express thousands: why, where, when?
Why change register half way through? [¶ Of course, even in the middle ages, educated professionals such as architects, military engineers and accountants would work to greater precision The Doomsday book (written in mediaeval Latin) has precise census numbers, but these are written in arabic numerals — they are not spelled out
- Who, what, where, when, why, how. Why so many Whs?
@RegDwight: [g] in где is historically the result of voicing [k] before the voiced consonant [d] (after [ъ] fell out in the initial interrogative sequence къ-); in что, [kь] underwent palatlization, whereas the -ъ- vs -ь- distinction in к[ъ]то "who" vs к[ь]то "what" was initially probably the distinction between two declination models, one for masculine, the other for neuter
- writing - thats why in formal essays - English Language Usage . . .
Towards the end of the century, that is why was predominantly the phrase to use In the 1950s, there was a trend reversal so that about 1982, that's why seems to have started gaining wider acceptance and usage We may have to infer that today, writers prefer the contraction over the longer idiomatic phrase
- grammaticality - Is it incorrect to say, Why cannot. . . . ? - English . . .
There are also many examples of "Why we cannot", but they are not interrogatives JForrest explains that 'cannot' is the negative form of 'can', and so 'cannot' should be placed in the same location as 'can' would be in a sentence Since we can say "Why can we grow taller?", "Why cannot we grow taller?" is a logical and properly written negative
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