So I learned that I tend to forget and unconsciously omit relative pronouns from my sentences, because apart from the fact that the meaning of some clauses without them remain clear and obvious, I find that relative pronouns make sentences superfluous. Instead of writing “the meat that are chilling in the freezer are spoiled”, I write “the meat chilling in the freezer are spoiled.” Or, “I believe it's true” instead of “I believe that it's true.” I find that many people do this, too. At first, I thought it's grammatically incorrect and is not acceptable in formal writing, but I recently came across a professional article that did the same thing. I'm just wondering whether it was a mistake or the editors deliberately left it that way because it's not really incorrect. So my question is, is the omission of relative pronouns acceptable? Or better yet, are relative pronouns always necessary?
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He will understand that I was not joking.   He will understand I was not joking.  Which of the sentences is correct? Are there any specific rules about the use of &quot;that&quot; in the sentences I reported as example?
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"Thought you'd never ask" is "I thought you'd never ask" with "I" omitted. "Hope this helps" is "I hope this helps" with "I" omitted.   In English grammar, normally every sentence should have a subject, right?   My first thought is that these two examples are so often used that they are like set phrases. But these are not really set phrases. You can alter the words after "thought" and "hope".  Another possible explanation is the tendency to drop the subject if it is the first person pronoun. It seems that in many languages, such as Spanish, Italian and Japanese, the first person subject is usually omitted. Maybe English is going the same way? (Not exactly the same, since in Italian, verb forms change according to the person, so the subject is not necessary to understand who one's referring to.)  And, apparently, such omission is more common in spoken English than in written English.  Are there more examples of such first person subject omission? How frequent is it?
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Why do British speakers omit the article in constructions like "go to hospital" or "go on holiday"? Pretty much all American speakers would rephrase those as "go to the hospital" and "go on a holiday", I think. Is there any good reason, or forgotten sense behind those words that might explain why the articles are ommitted?  Are there other common constructions other than those two that the British use that drop the article?  EDIT: I just realized per Kosmonaut's comment that Americans do much the same thing with a few nouns, so this isn't all that special.   Do grammaticists designate nouns that can have their article dropped with anything, i.e. do they have anything in common?
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The other day, my father and I were expecting my brothers to come home. Upon hearing a car enter the driveway, my father said, &quot;Your brothers are here.&quot; When I looked at the door, I could see that it was actually my sister who had arrived, and not my brothers, so I responded,  She's not my brothers.  This seemed like a very awkward construction, but I could not think of any reason that it would be ungrammatical, other than the subject being singular and the object being plural. I can think of several examples of sentences where the subject and object are different in number (with an intransitive verb: obviously there is nothing wrong with a transitive verb like &quot;kick&quot; having a subject an object differing in number) that do not seem to have any grammatical awkwardness.  We are a family. His mind and body are one. God is three persons: the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.  Is the sentence, &quot;she's not my brothers&quot; grammatically correct, and what makes it different from these other sentences?
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When it's OK to omit "where?" For example, is it OK to omit it in the following sentence?     This is the one of the few places (where) you can breathe real air.   In which situations one's not allowed to do this?
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I'm always confused when it's correct to use "Me" and when it's correct to use "I"?   Can I always replace "I" by "me" (not opposite)?  Some examples:  "Me and you went together there"  "I and you went together there"   For the moment I'm using me just in the end of the sentence or when I'm talking about me and someone else together. But I sometimes hear people that replace the two pronouns. Maybe here I'll solve the problem and I'll Know what is the correct way.
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I have come across the phrases like "to which","for which", "by which", "on which" and so on(using a preposition with a relative pronoun).   e.g. The chair on which the body was found..  Could someone please explain if there's a particular rule to be followed when building/using them?   Can I use any preposition before 'which'?  What if I say "The chair which the body was found on"? How would I decide which preposition to be put? Can I use other relative pronouns too?  Thanks in advance.
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In general, when can I omit that from a sentence?   Can I omit that (emphasized) in sentence (2) below?        We say that such algorithms handle concept drift and can learn from time-changing data streams.   When the statistical properties of the target variable change, we say that concept drift has occurred.   She told me that some of her classmates failed.      To me, sentences (1) and (3) sound better without that. If I omit that from (2), it just doesn't sound right when I read it out loud. (I should point out I'm not a native speaker.)  How do you decide when to omit it? Is it just a matter of taste? (I know that is sometimes mandatory.)  Can you think of sentences that "sound better" with that? Can you think of sentences that "sound better" without that? Can you think of a few sentences where it is wrong to omit that?
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If my understanding is correct, the  possessive personal pronouns (which are mine, thine, yours, his, hers, its, ours, and theirs) are used in place of nouns, whereas the possessive determiners (which are my, thy, your, his, her, its, our, and their) are used as adjectives.  If this is the case, then why is example 1 below correct, as opposed to example 2?   Whose book is this? It is mine.   Whose book is this? It is *my.
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I'm wondering how it is correct to structure sentence and what punctuation should be used. In particular, is the next sentence correct:     I was wondering if there's any progress on the issue.    Or should I put a question mark in the end of it. Also, can it be restructured to:     I was wondering: is there any progress on the issue?
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I saw this sentence on Internet recently written by a native speaker, so I wondered why native speakers tend to use this grammar.   Explain to me why I should I use "is" instead of "are"? Is it grammatically correct?     "There is rice, meat and tomatoes on my plate"   Why "There are rice, meat and tomatoes on my plate" is not correct?
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I would just like to clarify if in this kind of sentence, where you state the name of a person, are commas always needed to offset Anne?     His sister, Anne, was not feeling well.   Or is it acceptable to remove the commas? If yes, when?  Thank you!
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For example in a sentence like "This is the place where he was murdered", is where functioning as both a relative adverb and a relative pronoun?  Here where acts as pronoun as it refers back to its antecedent and also as relative adverb (according to Wren and Martin) but what i want to know is    Do they always work in this way? A lot of places I have seen that simply say that the word where modifies noun, a lot of grammar books say but How? Like it isn't adding something to the meaning of verb (was assaulted). Instead of telling me that this is a relative adverb I want an explanation or is it something that just needs to be classified as what renowned grammarians have classified because I haven't quite come up with any reason that proves it. One reason I could come up with was that where modifies the verb by relating a clause (this is the place) with it.
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I have this sentence:     There is an engine inside me that keeps saying "someone must be at the top, why isn't that you?"    Should I write that or leave it out?  I know both ways are correct, but I am asking for the most most most most most formal way.
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Occasionally I see constructs like this in English sentences:        Not only is this true in this case, but ...      What puzzles me is the "is this" part of it. The sentence is not a question, yet it seems to have a question-like order. Isn't this correct/preferred:        Not only this is true in this case, but ...      Are there other cases where non-question sentences contain question-like parts (so to speak)?
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Consider the following exchange:  [1] Q: Is your name Jane? &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Aa: &#42;Yes, it's right. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Ab: Yes, that's right.  Note that [1Aa] is simply not acceptable. It's not just that that is preferred to it; it's rather that, in Standard English, it simply cannot be used here.  Why not?   Yes, in the replies [1A], the reference is clearly (supposed to be) deictic rather than anaphoric (see below); and the characteristic usage of 3rd person personal pronouns he/she/it/they is anaphoric. But they certainly can function deictically at least sometimes;  gives the following example (p. 1469): Isn't she lovely! (uttered while looking at someone's baby).  So why is [1Aa] completely unacceptable, rather than just being less favored than [1Ab]?  I am well aware that Yes, it is would be completely acceptable... and I do understand why it would be. But [1Aa] is not, and my question is specifically about why it is not.  Some background on deixis  [1Ab] is a clear example of deictic use of that, very much like the [27ii] example from CGEL (p. 1461):     [27] i A: Kim has been falsifying the accounts. B: That's   terrible. [anaphoric]  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;ii A: Kim   has been falsifying the accounts. B: That's a lie.   [discourse-deictic]       In [i] A's utterance is the antecedent for B's that, which refers to   the situation that A has  described. But in [ii] that refers to A's   speech act, to a linguistic entity in the prior discourse.
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"He was watching the television when I called on him."  When I said this sentence to one of my friends  (an English teacher)  he corrected me saying that the definite article (the) should be omitted. Still, I can't understand why. ? Actually similar  question has been asked earlier but the answers were so ambiguous. So I put complete sentence.