Hi, everybody! Welcome back to Ask Alisha, the weekly series where you ask me questions and I answer them, maybe! |
Okay. Let’s get to your first question this week. |
First question this week comes from Mariam Atef. |
Hi, Mariam! |
Mariam says… |
“What the difference between ‘so’ and ‘so that’?” |
Okay. Sometimes, we can use them in the same way. It’s just a personal preference decision. So, sometimes, we use “so that” to mean “in order to” or “for the purpose of.” |
For example: |
“We need to wake up at 6 am so that we can get to the airport by 9 am.” |
Or, “You should save some money so that you can take a nice vacation.” |
In these sentences, I’ve used “so that,” but many people, me included, use “so” without “that.” So the reason for this is that “that” isn’t actually necessary. We don’t have to have “that” here. We can use the word “so” to connect these two ideas. “So,” by itself, has that same meaning of “in order to do (something).” So, many people choose to drop “that” just to make the sentence more efficient. |
So, in these cases, you can choose to use either “so” or “so that”, but please keep in mind with the other uses of “so,” like for emphasis reasons, we cannot replace “so” with “so that.” We can only use “so”. By this, I mean when you want to use “so” for emphasis of an adjective or an adverb. |
For example: |
“She sings so beautifully.” |
Or, “This coffee is so good.” |
We cannot replace “so” with “so that” in these example sentences. When you use “so” for emphasis, please use it alone. If you want to use it to mean “for the purpose of” or “in order to,” you can use “so that.” |
So I hope this helps you understand the differences between “so” and “so that.” Thanks very much for the question. |
Okay. Let’s move on to your next question. |
Next question comes from Aws, A-W-S. |
Hello, Aws! |
Aws says… |
“The word ‘congratulations’ is used on big occasions. What should we say to a person who bought new shoes directly from the seller or another exciting event?” |
Yeah. In situations that are exciting, but there’s no accomplishment or there’s no achievement, just use a positive adjective, something like “great” or “cool” or “fantastic” or “awesome.” |
If you want to talk about a singular object, you can say: |
“That’s cool!” |
or “That’s great!” |
You can also use this for a situation. |
Don’t use: |
“It’s cool!” |
Or “It’s great!” |
Use “that” in this case. |
If you want to talk about plural nouns, you can use: |
“Those are cool!” |
Or “Those are great!” |
Or “Those are fantastic!” as in like with shoes or maybe with glasses or something like that. |
So yes, as you said, we use “congratulations” for a big occasion, some kind of achievement or special accomplishment or important life event. For other just exciting things that happen, just use a positive adjective that you prefer. In my case, I’d probably say, “That’s cool!” or “That’s awesome!” |
So, I hope that this helps you. Thanks very much for the question. |
Okay. Let’s move to your next question. |
Next question comes from Aj. |
Hi, Aj! |
Aj says... |
“Hi, Alisha! What’s the difference between ‘no way’ and ‘impossible’?” |
Okay. We use “no way” to respond to shocking or surprising information. So, the key here is it’s a response. So, the idea behind “no way” is like there is no way this is possible. It’s like a longer way to say it. Or, there is no chance that this is possible. So, it’s something that’s hard for us to believe. We’re so surprised or we’re so shocked. So we can use this in both positive and in negative situations. We often use it in like happy, kind of surprised-related situations. |
So, for example, imagine you fly across the world to meet a friend or a family member, to surprise them. When they see you, they might say, “No way!” which means I’m so surprised right now, I can’t believe this is possible! So, it would sound very strange to say, “You’re here! Impossible!” We use “impossible” for physically not possible situations, for things that are 100% not possible. It sounds rather formal and it sounds like something we would use in maybe like scientific situations or something that we would use in like rule-based situations, so like there are rules or policies or agreements related to that thing. We use “no way” to express our surprise or our disbelief in everyday conversations. |
“No way” can also mean there’s no method to do (something). |
For example: |
“There’s no way to recover the files on your broken computer.” |
Or, “There’s no way to reschedule the event.” |
So, this use of “no way” share the meaning with “impossible”, but “no way” sounds much more casual. It’s a more friendly everyday word that we use. |
“Impossible” has this meaning like there’s no method of doing something or it is not possible, but it tends to sound more formal and a bit more serious. When we say, “There’s no way to recover the files on your computer, sorry” it sounds a little more friendly and casual than, “It’s impossible to recover the files on your computer.” That sounds much more serious and kind of like scary sometimes. |
So, yes, they do mean the same thing, but they have different grammatical structures as well. You might have noticed, I just said, “There’s no way to recover the files…” If you want to use “impossible,” we would say, “It’s impossible to recover the files.” So, please note that there are some differences in terms of the grammatical structure of the sentence when we use these expressions. |
So, again, “impossible” means something that is not possible to do, but we tend to use it in more serious situations. So, for everyday life situations, you can use “now way,” “there’s no way to do (something)” or you can use it to express your shock, your disbelief, “No way!” |
So, I hope that this helps you and don’t use, “Impossible!” to respond to somebody, unless you want to sound kind of surprised and very serious. So, I hope that this helps you. Thanks very much for the question. |
Okay. Let’s move on to your next question. |
Next question comes from Nazanin. |
Hello, Nazanin! |
Nazanin says… |
“Hey, Alisha! What is the difference between ‘rich’ and ‘wealthy’?” |
Oh yeah, nice question! You know the famous comedian, Chris Rock? He has a really famous bit or a really famous joke about the difference between “rich” and “wealthy,” but to explain it quickly and briefly here, “rich” has the feeling of someone who very recently got a lot of money, or they have some money, but we’re not sure it’s gonna be sustainable, which means we’re not sure if they can continue having lots of money. So, it’s like someone who has a lot of money and they might not have that money into the future. That’s someone who is rich. |
When we talk about someone who is “wealthy,” we’re talking about someone who has a history of having lots of money. Maybe their family has lots of money. For many generations, their family members have had lots of money. So, it’s a sustainable thing. It’s something that has happened for a long time, a condition that has been true for a long time. That’s someone who is “wealthy.” |
So, someone who is rich, we can think of as maybe they have money for a long time, maybe not, we don’t know. Someone who is wealthy though, they have like this history of lots and lots of money. In everyday conversation, many people use them in the same way. |
“He’s rich.” |
“She’s rich.” |
“He is wealthy.” |
“She is wealthy.” |
But, if you want to get into the specific details, this is the difference between these two words. So, I hope that this helps you. Thanks very much for the question. |
Okay, let’s move on to your next question. |
Next question comes from Pamela. |
Hi, Pamela! |
Pamela says… |
“Hi, Alisha! Thanks for your teaching. I would like to know when do we use the hyphen in some words? For example, in my work, I always use the words ‘nonparametric’ or ‘non-parametric’, or ‘socioeconomic’ or ‘socio-economic’, and more. Thanks in advance.” |
Great question! And unfortunately, there is no easy answer. The reason that you sometimes see words with a hyphen and sometimes without a hyphen is because there are a few different English writing guides that are used by different publications, different publishers. So, a publication or a publisher is a place that creates written documents like magazines. They create newspapers, they create books, and so on. So, depending on the type of work that is being produced, a different writing guide which is called a “style guide” might be used. |
There are a couple of really, really common, and very widely used English writing guides. These are called style guides. The first is the (AP) Style Book which is the Associated Press Style Book, and the second is the Chicago Manual of Style which is also Chicago or CMS, for short. So, the AP Style Book is used in journalism which means if you read newspapers that are written in American English, they probably use the AP Style Book to make their decisions regarding punctuation and other things, lots of other things. These include spelling, hyphenation, and so on. |
If, however, you’re looking at a novel, so a book or a short story, maybe, that kind of writing uses the Chicago Manual of Style, generally. To make things even more complex, publishers themselves often have in-house rules, so internal rules, rules that they used inside their company relating to spelling, punctuation, and so on. |
So, depending on the place that publishes something, the spelling or the hyphenation might be different. So, how do we make our decisions? How do we know what we should do? |
A couple of guidelines. |
Number one, I would sugest you first check the dictionary. |
My favorite is online and free, is the Merriam Webster Dictionary. Check to see the way that the word is spelled there. Do they use a hyphen? Do they not use a hyphen? |
Second would be to check and see what the spelling is or what the preferred style of hypenation is for that word in your industry. So by that I mean, check to see what other people are using. When other people write about that topic, what are they using? So, sometimes, this can help you, sometimes you see a mix of different things. |
The third thing that you can do is to consider, would having a hyphen or would not having a hyphen cause confusion for my reader? So, a great example of this is the word “re-creation” and and the word “recreation”. So, the problem here is that “recreation” and “re-creation” have the exact same spelling, but they have very different meanings. So, “recreation” means to do something for fun and “re-creation” refers to creating something again, very different meanings. They have the same spelling, so we need to have a hyphen in “re-creation” to separate the “re” from “creation.” If we don’t have the hyphen in that word, a reader might mistake the word for “recreation” which would cause a misunderstanding, overall. So, in these cases, it’s really important to consider hyphenation. If there’s a chance that your reader might be confused, as in this case, you should probably put a hyphen in the word. |
So, this is the reason you might find some words with a hyphen and some words without a hyphen and this is also hopefully a small guide for how you can decide whether to add a hyphen or not. I hope that this helps you. Thanks for an interesting question. |
Okay. That is everything that I have for this week. Thank you, as always, for sending your questions. Thanks very much for watching this week’s episode of Ask Alisha and I will see you again next week. Bye-bye! |
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