User talk:Unkani

Kokoro Connect

Thanks for your detailed edit, it was great. I used "**" in those "<!--" to represent my reply to your notes. Pudding321 17:18, 7 August 2012 (CDT)

No problem. You've done a great job so far. Longer discussions should be moved to the talk page for the chapter, though. Unkani 03:05, 8 August 2012 (CDT)

Are you trying to turn all of the tenses in the story to past tense? Actually, facts, specifically the status of the school in the fourth chapter, should be in present tense. I think it's fine to use past tense in some sense, but not all sentences in the chapter are changed. eg.The total number of clubs established was even over a hundred. Despite this, most clubs were abolished after a few years. The verb of the first sentence should be 'were', not 'was' if based on the next sentence. Pudding321 06:41, 9 August 2012 (CDT)

For sentences where the text is describing something that had already happened, I'm turning them into past tense. For example, from Ch. 1:

"Oh yeah. Nagase, what are we doing for our next issue?"
Taichi asked. 

The spoken words came first, but anything after this that describes what had happened would be in past tense. I know there's probably mistakes in tense where I'm going through the chapters, but because there's so much odd tensing, there may be inconsistencies.

Now for your particular sentence:

The total number of clubs established was even over a hundred. Despite this, most clubs were abolished after a few years. 

Regarding the present/past tense, clubs aren't being established now, but rather, they had already been established.

Similarly, many clubs had also been abolished. These actions occurred in the past, so I am using past tense.

From that, it is implied that of course, clubs are still being established. But the most significant detail is that there are already so many clubs because of the actions taken in the past.

Now if you agree with me that it should be in the past tense, we continue onto the singularity vs plurality argument. The verb of the first sentence should be 'were', not 'was' if based on the next sentence.

"Was" refers to the "number" of clubs, rather than "clubs". "Number" is singular, and so is "was". In the very next sentence, "clubs" is the subject, and "were" refers to "clubs".

The English language is tricky like that. Many natives don't even understand every situation where "was" vs "were" are appropriate.

For example: Everyone was. Everyone refers to many people, but the word itself is singular. Therefore, we use "was".

Then, we come to the trouble of using a non-gendered pronoun. "Their".

Everyone(singular) had(singular) tears on their(plural?!?) faces after the movie.

Everyone happens to be a singular pronoun, but it refers to multiple people, so we use "their". It's kind of hard to explain this because I'm not an English teacher...

But if you have any questions, I'll explain to the best of my ability. Unkani 17:09, 9 August 2012 (CDT)