Sports

[Rachel Adams]

Hello.

In my second sentence should it be 'sport' or 'sports'? 1. 'Why do you exercise?' 2. 'Why do you do sport?'

 

[emsr2d2]

Hello.

In my second sentence, should it be 'sport' or 'sports'?

1. 'Why do you exercise?'
2. 'Why do you do sport?'

They both work in BrE. I suppose if I knew for certain that someone played only one sport, I definitely wouldn't use "sports". If I didn't know how many different sports they played, or I knew it was more than one, I could use either. I tend to stick with "sport" no matter what, unless I choose to use "different" before it (see previous sentence).

Why do you play sport?
Where do you do sport?
I watch a lot of sport on TV.
I love watching live sport.
Don't you do any sport?

I did five different sports when I was a teenager.

 

[Glizdka]

Not a teacher
------

Hello, Rachel!

Are you sure you want to use do sport(s)? Do you think there's a chance you might have wanted to say play sport(s)?

I tried to understand the difference between sport and sports some time ago. It's complicated and dependent on the exact dialect you're interested in emulating.

Here's a good, short post about it.

I'd go with "Why do you play sports?"

 

[Yankee]

In AmE it would be "play sports".

 

[Rachel Adams]

They both work in BrE. I suppose if I knew for certain that someone played only one sport, I definitely wouldn't use "sports". If I didn't know how many different sports they played, or I knew it was more than one, I could use either. I tend to stick with "sport" no matter what, unless I choose to use "different" before it (see previous sentence).

Why do you play sport?
Where do you do sport?
I watch a lot of sport on TV.
I love watching live sport.
Don't you do any sport?

I did five different sports when I was a teenager.

Is it the same with 'exercise'? 'Why do you exercise?' 'Why do you do exercise?' or 'Why do you do exercises?'
I am very irritated by my own mistakes. When ending a sentence with a word in quotes should I include the question mark in it? And when I need to quote the whole sentence should I again include the question mark?
I noticed that some native speakers use ' ' some " " and some of them don't quote their examples at all.

 

[emsr2d2]

It's different for exercise because that's a verb as well. I'd just say "Why do you exercise?"

As far as quotation marks go, if the question mark is part of the quote then the question mark goes inside the quotation marks. If it's part of the sentence outside the quote, it goes outside.

I want to know if "How are you?" is correct.
Is there a problem with the sentence "I have a cat"?

If you're giving us a list of complete sentences to read, you don't need to put any of them in quotation marks.

1. Where is the prison?
2. I want to know where the prison is.

You won't get a consensus of opinion on whether to use single or double quotation marks. On the forum, I use only double quotation marks, whether it's for direct speech or when I'm exemplifying a word or sentence etc. That is entirely because I find single quotes quite hard to see in a post, even on a laptop (on my mobile, they're almost invisible). A double quotation mark is hard to miss. It gets more complicated when you want to put a quote within a quote but I don't think we need to worry about that right now. So you can choose to put a single quotation mark (one key stroke, using the same key you use for an apostrophe) or you can use double quotation marks (one key stroke, using the key that actually shows the double quotation marks on it). What you should not do is type a single quotation mark twice in succession in order to make something that looks like a double quotation mark but actually isn't one.

The key you need to use will depend on your keyboard. If you've got a standard PC/laptop keyboard, the double quotation mark is above the number 2. You need to hold down the Shift key and hit the 2. If you've got an Apple desktop or a Mac laptop, the double quotation mark is above the apostrophe - hold down Shift and hit the apostrophe key.

Here's where it is on a PC keyboard:




Here's where it is on a Mac keyboard:

 

[Rachel Adams]

Thank you very much for your detailed explanation. I put a full stop before a quotation mark. "She lives in Spain." But I have seen it used after quotes. Maybe by non-native speakers.

 

[Glizdka]

Not a teacher
------

Thank you very much for your detailed explanation. I put a full stop before a quotation mark. "She lives in Spain." But I have seen it used after quotes. Maybe by non-native speakers.

Don't be so quick to assume that native speakers know how to use punctuation marks just because they're native speakers. A quick trip around the realm of Facebook will surely convince you. ;-)

Before you start deciding what "looks better" and "seems more logical", find a few style guides that will show you how the rules of using punctuation marks work. There are many different style guides, and they don't necessarily agree with one another on everything.

Punctuation marks have a lot of uses. They can, for example, show pauses, changes in intonation, and more generally help you decide how written text shout be uttered. Punctuation rules can also show a linguistic function, help you decide what part of speech a word is, or even change the meaning of the sentence completely. Think of what's important to/for you. How much do you want to communicate by using punctuation marks?

Some uses of punctuation marks are so important that creators of style guides account for them. Some, not so much. Get a better understanding of why we use punctuation marks, and go with whatever you like best. There's a certain degree of freedom in using punctuation, but you need to stay consistent once you decide on what rules you want your text to follow.

Punctuation is only a small part of a bigger concept, text aesthetics. You can also use italics, change color, font, and use virtually anything you like if it accomplishes what you want it to accomplish. The sky is the limit.

---

Here's where it is on a PC keyboard:

View attachment 3532


Here's where it is on a Mac keyboard:
View attachment 3531

I have a PC and a PC keyboard. My key layout looks exactly like what you marked Mac keyboard. The Illuminati have us.

 

[GoesStation]

American publishers always use double quotes for the first quotation. It used to be pretty universal among British publishers, I think, to use single quotes, but now many prefer the double quote.

I was taught the American or "illogical" system of placing commas: always put them outside the closing quotation mark. Many years ago I switched to the logical British system.