One of the most commonly made grammatical mistakes today are the abbreviations "e.g." and "i.e.". I am not sure where the problem is. Maybe people are treating the word as a polysemy.
But they are not polysemy. Their meaning are completely different and you can't use them interchangeably. Lets have a look at the following sentence ;
Alvin uses reading skills and strategies to understand a variety of informational texts (i.e. textbooks).
What did the writer mean by this ?
He meant, "a variety of informational texts, for example, textbook ", but actually says, "a variety of informational texts, this is, textbook ", which is wrong because although textbook is a informational text, there are many informational texts other than textbook. The correct way to write is (e.g. textbooks)
"e.g." is the abbreviation for exempli gratia, and stands "for example"."i.e." is the abbreviation for id est, and stands for "that is".We use "e.g." when you want to give an example (or examples) of something you have just said. We use "i.e." when you wish to explain briefly or to clarify what you just said, or say the same thing in other words.
E.g. " Media, e.g. internet have a negative influence on youths , and one of which can cause them to become a anorexic (i.e. eating disorder characterized by low body weight and body image)."
I hope that clarifies some misunderstanding between the two abbreviations.
Vanan
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Another problem is that some people write things like "e.g. Toyota, Honda, etc.".
"E.g." means you're only giving examples, and not a complete list, so "etc" (and so on) isn't necessary.
Ludwig
Post a Comment