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Tangentially, is it just me, or is "To date, all the books have been returned." a bit of an awkward sentence? If I were going to use "To date" - I feel like I w
by neom 3y ago
Tangentially, is it just me, or is "To date, all the books have been returned." a bit of an awkward sentence? If I were going to use "To date" - I feel like I would use it to indicate there is more to happen at a future date, but in this context, it seems there is nothing left to happen? Not trying to be pedantic or nitpick, genuinely curious if I've been using To date incorrectly.
- Pinus 3y agoConsidering that this happened last Saturday, and today is Thursday, i.e, it has only been five days (more like four, since it's still early morning, local time, on Thursday) I find it extremely unlikely that all books have been returned by now — surely someone needs a week to get through a book?
- chrismorgan 3y agoMy guess: when they wrote the article, they hadn’t all been returned and it read “To date, only half of the books have been returned” or similar. Then it was updated clumsily with s/only half/all/ rather than redoing the sentence.
- amatecha 3y agoYeah, it kinda reads the same as "Thus far, all the books have been returned." Like.. so... just say "Fortunately, all the books have been returned." .. There aren't any more on the way or anything! hahah
- Mordisquitos 3y agoAll the more so when the value of the observation depends so much on the timeframe involved and the article does not explicitly state when the event happened. Sure, the article is dated 9th November 2023 and it is referring to something that happened on All Saints Day — which hopefully the reader will know is 1st November. But was it 1st November 2023 or 1st November 2003? It was indeed 2023. Was it so hard to say "Over the following week, all the books were returned.? Not only does it provide more information, but it even makes the story more compelling that the uninformative and useless "to date"!
- hurtuvac78 3y agoI thought the same. Another pedantic comment, just for fun: > It was a quiet revolution [...] “It felt good that everyone behaved exactly as usual " Not sure how I feel about "revolution" when things don't change.
- Bermion 3y agoBooks get different return-by dates based on their popularity in Sweden, so some have to be returned in a e.g. week, some in a month. So perhaps they just meant that none of the return deadlines have been missed so far?
- jack1243star 3y agoPerhaps the author is native in Nordic languages, and mis-translated "I dag"?