5 minutes walk

[Rachel Adams]

Hello
Are all the forms correct?

5 minutes walk from the city.
5 minutes walking distance from the city.
5 minutes within walking distance of the city.

 

[GoesStation]

Hello
Are all the forms correct?

Five minutes' walk from the city. :tick:
Five minutes walking distance from the city. :?:
5 minutes within walking distance of the city. :cross:

Number 1 is fine with my corrections. Number two mixes up distance and time and, while it's easily understood, I wouldn't use it.

Number 3 is wrong.

 

[Yankee]

Hello
Are all the forms correct?

5 minutes walk from the city.
5 minutes walking distance from the city.
5 minutes within walking distance of the city.

They're all OK, but If I have to make a choice, I'll go with the second example. However, at least in AmE it would not be uncommon to read/hear "5 minute walking distance from the city".

 

[emsr2d2]

I find the third ungrammatical. If it started with "Within" it's possible.

Within a five-minute walk of the city [centre].

 

[Rover_KE]

Grammatically, I prefer 'The apartment is a five-minute walk from the city centre'.

Realistically, that means nothing to me. There's a vast difference between the distance that can be walked in five minutes by an asthmatic, short, arthritic octogenarian like me, and a tall, fit, young athlete like Roger Federer.

Just tell me how far it is, whether it's uphill, downhill or on the level, and I'll be the judge of how long it'll take me to walk it!

 

[Tarheel]

I agree with Rover. It's best to simply specify the distance.

 

[SoothingDave]

Then again, minutes makes more sense, considering an average person. If you told me it was 0.8 miles or 1.2 km, I would not necessarily have a feel for that.

 

[bubbha]

All of them are incomplete sentences.

The following are acceptable:

It's five minutes' walk from here. (Note the apostrophe.)
It's a five-minute walk from here. (Note the hyphen.)

 

[tedmc]

Grammatically, I prefer 'The apartment is a five-minute walk from the city centre'.

Realistically, that means nothing to me. There's a vast difference between the distance that can be walked in five minutes by an asthmatic, short, arthritic octogenarian like me, and a tall, fit, young athlete like Roger Federer.

Just tell me how far it is, whether it's uphill, downhill or on the level, and I'll be the judge of how long it'll take me to walk it!

I think a laymen who knows a place would be able to give an estimate of the average time required to walk from one point to another rather than the distance. How would one know the distance offhand, unless u get it off google map from a smartphone?

 

[emsr2d2]

I think a layman who knows a place would be able to give an estimate of the average time required to walk from one point to another rather than the distance. How would one know the distance offhand, unless you get it off Google Maps? [STRIKE]from a smartphone?[/STRIKE]

See my corrections above. Don't forget you can use Google Maps on a PC, laptop, smartphone or a tablet (and probably, these days, on an e-reader).

The combination of "one" and "you" in the final sentence is awkward - the only reason I left the latter in was to make sure everyone sees that "u" is not acceptable on the forum.

 

[tedmc]

Sorry, the "u", typos and lower-case letters are a resuit of typing on the smartphone.

 

[emsr2d2]

With all due respect, that's no excuse. Smartphones are very advanced these days. I don't use mine for this forum (because there's still no iOS version) but I use it for pretty much all text messages, email, WhatsApp etc) and it is not difficult at all to capitalise, punctuate and spell correctly.