Two short and simple ones this week:
1) 1970s. Not:
a) 1970ies (wrong)
b) 1970’s (wrong; what can a decade own?)
c) in the 70s of the previous decade (too long)
d) 70s (fine if the WHEN is clear. In formal writing, you’ll often want to stretch this out to 1970s)
You can do similar things with other decades.
2) “to crush” vs. “to crash”
“crushed” is good for cans, bugs, and emotional hardship.
a) “Kunigunda crushed the beer can with his foot.”
b) “He was crushed by a Japanese monster.”
c) “I was crushed when my crush on John…”
Unless the car/bicycle/skateboard is totalled from above (falling rocks? UFOs?), write: “crashed the car…”
All Language Notes of the Week are available at:
http://www2.arnes.si/~bjason/LNW.pdf
(Skupno 19 obiskov, današnjih obiskov 1)