Curiosities and General Doubts

Question 1

What’s the difference between parentheses and parenthesis?

Answer 1

1. A parenthesis is one of the marks usually called (ordinary, or curved) brackets in the UK or material set off by a pair of brackets (or commas or dashes). Actually, since one bracket is rarely found without its ‘other half’, the singular form parenthesis more often refers to the inserted material, but this is not mandatory. To really disambiguate, the term ‘parenthetical’, used as a noun, is often used for the ‘inserted material’ sense.
2. Parentheses is usually used to refer the pair of brackets often used to set off a parenthetical – but the term could also be used for more than one parenthetical.

In a nutshell: parenthesis is the singular form and parentheses is the plural.

Question 2

‘apesar disso’

Answer 2

1. Aside from that
   “Money continues to be a problem but aside from that, we’re all well.”
2. Apart from that
3. Other than that
   “It was cold, other than that we had a great time.”

Question 3

“e.g.” and “i.e.” - what’s the difference?

Answer 3

I.e. and e.g. are both Latin abbreviations.
1. E.g. stands for exempli gratia and means “for example”.
“Should that happen to poor, as-yet unaffected places (e.g., most of South Asia and Africa) the suffering can be great.”

2. I.e. is the abbreviation for id est and means “in other words”.
   “Besides math and crossword puzzles, I am passionate about self-supported bicycle touring, i.e., traveling hundreds and thousands of miles on a bike with all my camping gear and other supplies.”

Question 4

sth and sb meanings (abbreviations)

Answer 4

1. ‘sth’ is a standard abbreviation for something.

2. ‘sb’ is a standard abbreviation for somebody or someone.

Question 5

Apostrophe ‘s and s’

Answer 5

A possessive noun shows ownership, or that something belongs to the noun. The basic possessive form of a noun is made by adding –‘s if the word is singular, or –s’ if the word is plural. This is fairly simple in most cases. For example “The dog’s house was in the yard”. “The dogs’ house was in the garden”. The first sentence uses the singular form of the verb, dog, and the second sentence uses the plural form of the noun, dogs.