Hi. could someone please check the following sentence and see if it make sense I am not sure if i've used jurisdiction properly. "Governmental jurisdiction over internet is essentially wrong."
@snailboat So, this sentence should be correct: "The Red firm fell behind the Blue in the mid-1992"? or I should write "the earnings or the Red fell behind those of Blue"
@Ilan I can imagine a CNN reporter saying that, implying the whole performance of the two firms (or companies). However, I think I prefer just in mid-1992 informally, and in the middle of 1992 for a more formal occasion.
@Freddy Oh, he doesn't sound much like one to me. But I'm not that familiar with Australian accents anyway. Thanks for the info!
@Ilan Yes, without proper supporting text (i.e. sentences before or after, but ones that come before are usually more important), it would sound rather casual. It's not that informal, but it will sound like something people say rather than write.
It's hard to tell in the case of overtook. More context is needed.
I think overtake (or its past tense) is okay in that sentence. However, in the context of business, finance, and investment, particularly in earnings, you might want to consider such words as outperform and underperform.
Interesting. I think both are possible. -- checking some real examples...
> The reason Apple has outperformed and will continue to outperform Google both on the earnings front and in terms of the stock performance ...
> In the short term we do think the U.S. earnings season could be a catalyst to emerging market outperformance.
> As of Jan 15, 2015, the consensus forecast amongst 74 polled investment analysts covering Apple Inc. advises that the company will outperform the market.
I believe learning conditional sentences as 1st, 2nd etc conditional is not a good idea...though initially it's good but soon you should move on to some patterns of conditional sentences. That is what I advised OP. But I think that is not working
yea that is also true...i was just a bit worried whither I suggested some wrong info to the OP. And the OP seems to be too serious because he is asking the same question over again and this time with some bounty :D
yea...i have seen one also...that site I remember because there he discussed some good point, but unfortunately he failed to understand it and asked the same question here again.
Ah I can't help but I really pity for that guy. He appears too dedicated, but something is amiss...anyways up to him, I already told to stick to the current discussion rather than jumping forums. I can't think of anything else to help him, may be someone having the same native language of his might help him :)
Ilan's problem is descriptive writing on charts and diagrams in the academic context. (It could be either business or scientific writing, depending on the given chart/diagram.)
(I'm thinking of the standard three-paragraph short essay. Intro (What is this?), body (what is it, really?), and conclusion (what are the main points?).)
"This table shows the decline of RED from market [or whatever it is] dominance in the mid-1970s to a distant third place by 2000, and the corresponding rise of GREEN, closely followed by BLUE.
"In 1975 a total [whatever-it-is] of approximately 115 units is shown; of these, RED accounted for 100, or 87%. But in that year both GREEN and BLUE started to raise their [whatever-it-is], GREEN rapidly and BLUE more slowly. By 1985, just ten years later, although RED had maintained the lead, its absolute [?output?] had not grown but declined, and represented only about 45% of the whole.
"From that year, 1985, RED went into a steep decline; BLUE accelerated its growth, and GREEN continued to grow, albeit more slowly. GREEN assumed the lead before the end of the 1980s, and BLUE surpassed RED's [output] early in the 1990s. In 1995, GREEN matched RED's previous peak with 100 [whatever-they-are], about 43% of the total, and BLUE was not far behind, with 36%. RED's contribution was now only 21%.
"In 1995-2000 (2000 is the final year in this dataset), GREEN and BLUE appear to have reached a plateau: BLUE's [output] was flat for those years, and GREEN's increased by only a few percentage points. RED, in the meantime, continued to decline, albeit not quite so rapidly as before.
'Formal' writing is not one thing, but a variety of dialects, each peculiar to its own discipline. But if this graph represents the economic results achieved by companies (which your earlier discussion suggested), then performance and outperform are certainly acceptable. Underperform, however, is marginal; this is usually employed to speak of a firm (or a student!) failing to meet the results expected, the results it is felt the firm should have met.
While we might speak of Ford outperforming Chrysler, we would not speak of Chrysler underperforming Ford. Underperform is usually an intransitive verb, outperform is transitive.
nods -- I should've added that when I mentioned underperform.
By the way, this IELTS writing exam reminds me of something I've heard about Michael Crichton.
> Crichton then decided to go to Harvard University and become a writer. But Harvard proved to be very disheartening for the young writer. His writing style was severely criticized and his grades hovered around a C. At the age of eighteen he decided that it was Harvard, and not he, that was in error.
> Convinced of this he hesitatingly retyped an essay of George Orwell's and submitted it as his own. The professor did not catch his plagiarism, and gave Orwell a B-. Crichton was convinced that the Harvard English Department was too hard for him.
English professors can be very far removed from the real world. The English poet Robert Graves was severely criticized at Oxford for suggesting in one of his essays that some writers on the required reading list were better than others!
I was sure that some teacher never checks our works and give us score randomly. So, inside the task I wrote words like "ffffu" "omg" etc and you know - i've got 100!
@StoneyB you remind me some task in geometry where I had to provide an evidence that some shape exists.... Instead of geometrical evidence I provided a real shape I did at home. I've got a "V" for that!
Should I have corrected you? ... I'm not on chat very often, so I don't know the etiquette.
A proof is a coherent argument which demonstrates the truth of a providence. Evidence (never an evidence--it's a non-count noun) is the collection of points you employ to support your argument.
The former (with the to infinitive) usually signifies that you desire correction and insist on correction; the latter usually signifies merely that you believe correction will happen, whether you like it or not.
Evidence. One piece of evidence for that proposition is that Magellan sailed all the way around the Earth, heading West initially and returning from the East. (But that could happen on a flat Earth, too, depending on the course Magellan followed.) Another piece is the visibility of ships with tall masts: as a ship approaches you the flag at the top is seen first, then the mast and sails, and finally the hull, suggesting it is 'mounting' a curved surface. ...
... (But that could be explained by saying the surface of the ocean is bumpy). And so forth. None of the individual pieces of evidence proves that the earth is round; but put them together and they form a convincing argument which does prove it.
The total argument is the proof.
On the other hand, a single piece of evidence may be 'probative'. The fact that so-and-so's fingerprint is on the gun is both evidence and proof that he handled the gun at some time.
On the other hand, a formal proof in geometry--proof of the Pythagorean theorem, for example--does not provide "evidence", because none of the individual axioms you cite suggests that the theorem is true. Yet the total argument constitutes a "proof".
"Evidence" suggests that something may be a fact; "proof" establishes that is a fact.
@Ilan Note the error (which is probably just a typo, but...): "stronger ... than", not "stronger ... that".
I know nothing about the IELTS exam (or any other exam); but you are clearly able to express yourself in English. Just relax into it -- don't get so anxious you aren't able to do your best work.
No: it means to attach, as if with a screw, with an overtone of 'making a strong effort', as in driving a screw. And the sticking-place is the place where you want to attach it.
Ratchet up your courage to the point where you're bold enough to do what you need to do.
