8 thoughts on “Legal”

    1. To be “done an edit” or “finished an edit” is perfectly idiomatic to me. Is it not to you? I’m in Canada. Where are you located?

      1. Sorry, nothing to do with the idiom. I should have been more clear. You wrote:
        “I’m finally done the plain-language edit…”
        so I suggested to change it to
        “I’m finally done with the plain-language edit…”

        Or you could change “I’m” to “I’ve” to read
        “I’ve finally done the plain-language edit…”

          1. I only wrote because I thought it was a typo. In U.S. English, it would be wrong. I meant no offense.

      2. Don’t know if it’s idiomatic or not, but “I’m done the edit” or “I’m finished the edit” both sound to me as if they need a “with” before “the.” If it were “I have”instead of “I am,”—“I’ve done the edit” or “I’ve finished the edit,” that’s fine. I’m just saying now what sounds right or wrong to my ear, not figuring out what’s going on in the structure of the sentence. I grew up in Nebraska, live now in Austin TX, and have lived all over the U.S.

          1. I had no problem with this. I had a partner for years who was from Pennsylvania and, as Fruewald points out in that paper, this was her regular sentence construction. It’s also common in England, Canada and the Rust Belt of America to drop infinitive “to be” in all tenses, similar to the way they say “This needs washed” or “It could do.” Sounds a bit peculiar to us on the West Coast but is perfectly common English usage.

            Next we’ll discuss the difference between a “tag sale” and “yard sale” and a “rummage sale” 😀

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