rumors about English

[tyrp]

NOT A TEACHER and NOT A NATIVE SPEAKER
As I see your example, its meaning is: 'I haven't been smoking for 4 years. It was 4 years ago that I did it last'. The sentence is close to #1 from your list, though we don't know whether the person really gave up smoking on purpose, or just it happened so that they weren't able to have a smoke for 4 years.

[Barb_D]

I hope, now that you've seen that most of the things you thought were wrong are actually okay, you can stop "hating" those people.