In point of usage, Ngrams shows a slight preference for What about you: COCA shows 770 instances of how about you, the vast majority of which are in the proper context (a few are in the form of how about you do so-and-so), and 1002 of what about you, all of which that I saw were in this context. BNC has 78 versus 202, an even more marked ...

You can't hit the ball (get a hit) if you don't swing (the bat). 1943 John R. Tunis, Keystone Kids (New York: Harcourt, Brace) 141: "'Get your bat offa your shoulders, Jocko. You can't expect to hit if you don't swing at 'em.'" 1949: Frank Bettger, How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling (Englewood Cliffs NJ: Prentice Hall) 16 ...

Sep 25, 2010 · You've likely seen the common example: The human brain often skips any extra words that appear in the the sentence they're reading. The same behaviour might happen with the extra "that" appearing in your sentence. So while it might be correct in theory, perhaps you could reword your sentence such that it becomes more readable for your audience.

In your specific case, neither 'was' nor 'were' is best; you should say "if it is running". "If it were running" is subjunctive case, used to describe hypothetical situations: "If it were running, I would stop it first, but it's already stopped."

Either you start something, and then it runs, or you don't. "Get started" implies, start it, but don't expect any results yet, because you're still starting and not actually doing yet. Of course, the language is full of weasel phrases that add color and fuzziness, attempting to reflect the nuances of …

Jul 15, 2011 · The NOAD reports that aren't is the contraction of are not, and am not; in the latter case, it is used only in questions.

Feb 10, 2020 · If you were asked whether you have ever had an accident while driving, you might answer that you had a couple of accidents when you were younger. It is of course the past tense. If you reported this conversation, you could say that you told him that you have had past accidents. It is sometimes called the past perfect tense.

Apr 3, 2012 · What he is saying implicitly is: this is the way things have been done since time immemorial, and you modern idiots are complicit in the degeneration of the English language. Whereas, in reality, Shakespeare's usage (not the same as modern usage) evolved into Fowler's usage, and Fowler's usage evolved into modern usage, and none of them is ...

Apr 25, 2013 · In future, you might find that for any given song, typing "SONG NAME + lyrics" into Google is sufficient to give you a transcript of the song. It's also worth bearing in mind that songs are routinely ungrammatical and not representative of normal spoken/written English, so you should always be exceptionally wary of making grammatical ...

Possible Duplicate: “If I was” or “If I were”. Which is more common, and which is correct? If I was to sum up my computer knowledge in one word, it would be “destitute”.