Thanks. Spelling's the same; I've tried putting both in when I'm not sure to see if Word argues about it and usually it doesn't, so I'm just as wise as ever. It's more frustrating when everything else to do with spelling and grammar comes so easily to me.jb1111 said:The American Heritage Dictionary says you'd use the term "going past". Examples of the verb use are "they passed our home." "Time passed slowly." But the adverbial use is "past" -- "He drove past", "He walked past", are their examples in that case.
The spelling may be different in the UK?
My guess is if you have a dictionary, look up "Pass" and "Past", mine goes into pretty good detail on it. Some dictionaries are more helpful than others.
That's where I get confused. I don't have a problem with verbs normally, just this one. I can usually here my old English teacher in my ear, but not with this one. Perhaps because she's long since 'passed' on. Or has she 'past' on?Patty Jansen said:Passed is a verb. If the word you're about to use is not a verb, it should be past.
There is only one verb in the sentence "She passed on." There are no other words that could possibly be a verb. With passed/past you probably have to ignore trying to make any sense of the meaning and simply look at the elements of the sentence. If the word you're dithering over is a verb, it should be "oassed".Doglover said:That's where I get confused. I don't have a problem with verbs normally, just this one. I can usually here my old English teacher in my ear, but not with this one. Perhaps because she's long since 'passed' on. Or has she 'past' on?
No. :-o"She [has] long since past on." In this case, the verb is "has," so you need an adverb here. Thus, "past."
I don't think there are any members here who have never heard of Grammarly. It is useful, but it must never be relied upon. I used it once when I was trying it out for a friend, but it wanted to change my 'Your Majesty' to 'You're Majesty' for some strange reason. It is also an American tool, so if you write with British English, you might find hyphens where we wouldn't put them and Oxford commas.Julia2233 said:First of all, thanks for the explanation and enlightening! Also, I want to say that it is possible to use Grammarly. Maybe you have already heard about this tool. I use its free version and it automatically corrects the mistakes or suggests better variants. Does anyone else use it? It would be great to find out how great the paid version is.
I noticed that sometimes it corrects things that don't need to be fixed. But still, I find this tool to be useful. Maybe I should try the premium version.Doglover said:I don't think there are any members here who have never heard of Grammarly. It is useful, but it must never be relied upon. I used it once when I was trying it out for a friend, but it wanted to change my 'Your Majesty' to 'You're Majesty' for some strange reason. It is also an American tool, so if you write with British English, you might find hyphens where we wouldn't put them and Oxford commas.
Unfortunately, when past is an adverb, it has to do with movement, not time, as in Bob walked past the bar instead of going in.LDB said:Past is time.
Passed is movement.
They are in England as well.Becca Mills said:Unfortunately, when past is an adverb, it has to do with movement, not time, as in Bob walked past the bar instead of going in.
I can see why past/passed are so easily confused. It doesn't help that they're aural homophones (at least in U.S. English), so people grow up not being able to hear the difference between them in speech.