Generate the answer for a given question. The question requires common knowledge of English. Make sure that the answer is in detail, long, consistent with the context, and requires general knowledge of English. To be less repetitive, please vary your language for each question. Give a proper explanation to answer, and if necessary, provide the definition of various terms. And conclude your answer if it's long. If you have used other resources (e.g., Merriam Webster's.) to answer the question, include citations in your answer. You don't need to paraphrase the context of your resources, but make sure that your answer is consistent and complete.
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Question: Is there a way to indicate that somebody is your girlfriend without using the possessive term my? I think saying She/He is my partner/other half is OK for married people, but it doesn't feel right for girlfriends and boyfriends.

Answer: There is nothing wrong with using my. Saying my medical appointment does not mean the medical appointment belongs to me, but just that it is connected to me in some way. Stick to my for there is no alternative which expresses the idea succinctly.


Question: Is there a specific rule, or set of rules, that can be followed to know when to use each word? I have noticed that not is usually used with a verb, but I think that there sometimes are exceptions although I can't think of one now.

Answer: Not is a negative adverb; no is a negative quantifier; non- is a negative prefix. Since negation is so important, thousands of idioms use each of these, among other negatives. Consequently there are lots of exceptions to the general rules below. Non- is not a word, but a part of another word, usually a descriptive adjective: non-lethal, non-professional, non-native, non-technical, non-playing (The hyphen is optional.) Each of these mean 'anything but ...' -- anything that doesn't kill you is non-lethal, anything that's not technical is non-technical, etc. This meaning contrasts with un- and in-, which refer to opposites instead of complements. No is half of the answer pair Yes/No, shading off vocally into Nah, Nuh-uh, and Uh-uh. But it can also quantify and negate any noun phrase: Some blade of grass ~ No blade of grass; One who saw it ~ No one who saw it. Not is the general negator for verb phrases, including predicate adjectives and nouns. In a verb phrase, not occurs immediately after the first auxiliary verb. If there is no auxiliary verb in the verb phrase, Do-Support supplies a form of do. Not is contracted whenever possible, with auxiliaries or subjects (especially pronouns): He's not interested ~ He isn't interested; She doesn't like it, but not *She not likes it. Any of these negatives (and many others) can negate a sentence, changing its truth value. It's easy to switch between them, too; the sentences below all mean the same thing: They allowed no phone calls. They didn't allow phone calls. No one allowed phone calls. Phone calls weren't allowed.


Question: I have been using the term ofcourse ever since kindergarten. However, I recently stumbled upon a site that claims of course is how the term is correctly used and not ofcourse. I would like to seek the community's opinion about which is the correct usage of that term.

Answer:
I'm not sure what novels you are referring to, but ofcourse is a typo. Wiktionary doesn't have an entry for it, and neither does Merriam-Webster or any dictionary I have checked. Here are the usage stats from the British National Corpus and the Corpus of Contemporary American English: BNC COCA of course 29651 100939 ofcourse 1 12


