Talking about a fire

[Rachel Adams]

If I am talking about a fire in a building, can I say "Everything ended well. All stayed alive and well."

 

[emsr2d2]

No. "Everyone survived" or "Everyone is [still] alive and well".

 

[teechar]

You can also say "No one was injured/hurt/harmed".

 

[Rachel Adams]

No. "Everyone survived" or "Everyone is [still] alive and well".

"Ended well" is unnecessary, isn't it?

 

[Rachel Adams]

Well, there is nothing wrong in saying it.

Should there be a comma after "morning"?
One morning, when we woke up we saw that a neighboring building was on fire.

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

Should there be a comma after "morning"?
One morning, when we woke up, we saw that a neighboring building was on fire.

With that one comma, it makes "one morning" a dependent clause. That's fine. If you put a comma after up, "when we woke up" becomes a dependent clause, too. That's what I'd do, but I don't think it's necessary.

You could also write it with no commas. That would mean that sometimes you don't wake up in the morning.

There's nothing wrong with that!

 

[Tdol]

"Ended well" is unnecessary, isn't it?

It didn't end well; it didn't end as badly as it could have.

 

[Yankee]

"Ended well" is unnecessary, isn't it?

Yes. I really can't imagine that "everything" ended well in any fire.

 

[tzfujimino]

It didn't end well; it didn't end as badly as it could have.

May I ask how you pronounce the part in bold?
Do you pronounce it as /kʊdəv/ , like "could of"?

 

[teechar]

Do you pronounce it as /kʊdəv/

That's possible, but you can also pronounce them as two separate words (especially for emphasis).

like "could of"?

That's not a good example, because "could of" is often (ungrammatically) used instead of "could have". In such cases, "could of" is always wrong.
It is possible to encounter "could of", for example:
He could of necessity resort to that.
But that is not common at all.

 

[tzfujimino]

That's not a good example, because "could of" is often (ungrammatically) used instead of "could have". In such cases, "could of" is always wrong.
It is possible to encounter "could of", for example:
He could of necessity resort to that.
But that is not common at all.

I agree.
There are people who are not familiar with phonetic alphabets, so I was just trying to show them how /kʊdəv/ sounds.

 

[emsr2d2]

He could, of necessity, resort to that.

In order to avoid potential confusion (not ambiguity, as such) in that sentence, I would add the commas shown above. The commas would also reflect the slight pause on either side of "of necessity" that would be heard in the spoken version.

 

[teechar]

I would say the pause is mostly not there in colloquial English.