Ask the English Teacher

Suitable for? Suitable to?

Kevin Chan asks:
I was wondering whether these two terms are interchangeable.
For example, are the sentences "Is this suitable to you?" and "Is this suitable for you" both correct?

"Suitable" means "appropriate," and both words can take either "to" or "for" as a preposition. To a large extent "suitable to" and "suitable for" are indeed interchangeable, but in the example you give I think I'd use "for." We seem to use "suitable for" when referring to a person or to an "ing" verb, and "suitable to" when referring to a thing or a "to" verb:

The hotel room should be suitable for you.
I tried to make my speech suitable for the audience.
The photograph is suitable for framing.

But:

The hotel room should be suitable to your needs.
I tried to make my speech suitable to the occasion.
The photograph is suitable to be framed.

I base this suggestion not on an authority but on what I hear people use—and I don't hear "suitable to you."

Thanks for the question, Kevin—it's always enjoyable to think about what I never think about!

Diction Demons

Haemi's question about "rear" and "raise" reminded me that English has a lot of words that sound alike but mean very different things. "Diction" means "word choice," and sometimes it's hard to choose. I've uploaded a list of Diction Demons that we use in some of my courses. It's a Word file. I hope you find it useful.

Raise or Rear?

My friend Haemi asks:

The teacher's name was Mrs. Porter. She was a regular school teacher, in that schoolmarm-ish way. We were writing autobiographies. We had to present our works to the rest of the class, and I got up and started to read mine. I don't have the exact wording, but I remember reading, "I was raised ..." And Mrs. Porter, who was a hefty woman with cropped silvery white hair, was fuming. She proceeded to tell the class that I had just called myself an animal of some sort, because human children are "reared" not raised." One raises cattle. Or corn. One "rears" children.

Ever since, I had been extra careful in using the "raised" and furthermore, it makes me wince when other people use that word to indicate the rearing of children. Nowadays, however, I see that the term "raised" is frequently used to indicate the up-bringing of children, human or not, and even dictionaries state definitions to fit this. What is a person supposed to do?

So that's my question -- it's been sitting on the back of my mind for ages now!

Italics (and Parentheses)

Majid asks:

My first question is: generally, how can we use italic form? Does it matter to how long the quote is?
Secondly, when we open a pare of bracket(parenthesis), should it be sticked to the last word?

Both are very good questions.

First, we use italic text for two main reasons: to place emphasis, and to identify a particular kind of document like a book or journal. We may also use italics as I just did with Majid's question, as a way of quoting without using quotation marks.

In the typewriter age, italics were for printers, not typists. The best we could do was to underline text that we wanted to see in italics. (With the IBM Selectric, we got type balls with italic letters—they were fun, but clumsy.) Now, however, we can use (and abuse) italics as much as we like.

"Even More So" and "Braveness"

My friend Yu Shengnan, who teaches English in China, writes to ask:

Here is a sentence that I am not so clear about.

“Professional fighters are particularly criticized, but even more so the promoters of boxing matches who, it is said, make untold wealth out of the sufferings of the boxers.”

I don’t know the meaning and the function of “even more so”. What do you think?

In this expression, "so" refers to the criticism. "Even" in this expression is an intensifier, making the statement stronger. "Even more so" is like saying "The promoters receive much more criticism than the boxers do--and the boxers receive a lot of criticism!"

Here are a couple of extra examples:
"Is John absent because he is ill?"
"So he said." (That is, John said he was ill.)

Mr. Wang loves spicy food, but even he found the soup too spicy. (A lover of spicy food could not enjoy such a very spicy soup.)

Shengnan also asked:
“Although we may not always approve of the motives that lead a man to take up professional boxing as a career, we cannot help admiring his bravery in the ring”. In this sentence, can we replace “bravery ” with “braveness”? I can’t find the difference in the dictionary.

My own dictionary gives "braveness" and "bravery" also, but "bravery" would be the term most people would use. So you could say "braveness," but many native English speakers would think the word was a little odd or unusual. They would use "bravery" or "courage."

The Word Spy

If you are interested in new English words, The Word Spy is an excellent resource. Every day it offers a new word or phrase, with a definition and a mention of its first appearance.

Of course, if you use all these words, lots of other people won't know what you're talking about!

Using Capitals

Iman el Nemr writes:
I would like to know if we need to capitalize the first letters in the words: College Diploma.

Secondly, which is better:
-Unfortunately, I failed the English Exit exam required in order to receive my college diploma.

-Unfortunately, I failed the English Exit exam required for my college diploma.

To answer your first question: No. The phrase is not a proper noun. You could write:
I received my college diploma in June 2003
—and you would be correct.

However, if the phrase is part of the name of an education program, then you would capitalize it:
I attended the College Diploma Program at Wilson College.
She received a Diploma in Business Management in 2002.

Here's another example: I am teaching students in my college's Outdoor Recreation Management Diploma Program—all in capitals because it's the proper name of the program. When the students graduate, they will look for work in outdoor recreation management—all in lower-case letter because it's just the name of an occupational field, not of a specific group or organization.

As for your second question, I would take the second choice. "In order to" is almost always unnecessary. Consider:
In order to improve my English, I studied in Canada.
To improve my English, I studied in Canada.

The two sentences are identical in meaning, but one is two words shorter...and shorter is better.

News and Stuff

Some English words cause a lot of trouble for learners because they don't behave logically. For example, "news" sounds like a plural, so learners may write: "The news are good." An American newspaper publisher once thought the same thing, and decreed that henceforth "news" would be plural. Then he sent a telegram to one of his reporters: "Are there are any news?"

"Not a single new," the reporter replied. After that, "news" was singular again.

Other English words are what we call "non-count" nouns that sound singular but are actually plural. "Stuff" is a good example:

She has a lot of stuff in her apartment. But we might also choose another word:
She has a lot of things in her apartment. Here the plural of "thing" is quite correct. But "stuffs" would not be correct. "Stuff" is a general term for "things I don't want to list," and it's almost always singular. (English always has exceptions!) We might correctly say:

The kitchen was full of foodstuffs.

Endless, Limitless, Boundless?

My friend Yu Shengnan in Jinan writes:

Just now I was preparing for my class, and I met a question. It goes like this:

The requirement: decide which of the choices given completes the passage correctly if inserted in the corresponding blanks.

"But recent concern about power supplies has led to increased interest in the use of wind as a source of electrical power. Windmills are clean and they leave no waste, and they use a ______ resource." A) measureless B) limitless C) boundless D) endless

I have consulted the dictionary, but I couldn't find a satisfactory explanation. Frankly speaking, I chose C, but the reference answer is B, and I still feel confused, I can hardly find the differences of these choices.

What do you think?

I would choose "limitless," though "boundless" is OK also. "Limits" and "bounds" are pretty close synonyms, and my dictionary defines "boundless" as "without limit."

"Measureless" does not apply because we can certainly measure the wind! "Endless" doesn't quite work because the wind can stop.

That or Which?

Per Unheim writes from Bangladesh:

I'm confused as to when it's appropriate to use 'that' vs. 'which'. For example: "The organizations which focus on human rights" will be corrected by MS Word's grammar checker to read "...that focus...", though the first version sounds better and which (or that) comes naturally to me. I'd be very grateful if you could refresh my memory on the 'that' vs ' which' rule; I know it has something to do with the identity of the subject preceding the pronoun, but I'm at a loss beyond that.

This can be a vexing problem, all right. "Which" and "that" are what we call "relative pronouns." They do have to refer to an antecedent—a noun of some kind. In the example you give, "which" refers to "organizations."

Relative pronouns usually start a subordinate clause. Such a clause may provide "nice to know" information, or absolutely essential information.