A few questions on proper english usage

[joycie]

Hello everyone,

Is "long time no see" a proper english sentence?

It should be "you are welcome to attend..." or "you are welcomed to attend..."

[BLiZZaRD]

Long time no see is a phrase, not really a sentence. (Talking US English here, not UK) We Americans don't really care for properness though. It means what it says, so therefore it works just fine.

The proper form is "You are welcome to attend." As if you are talking to someone. If you are talking about someone (either past or future tense) it would be the other. "He will be welcomed to attend." "Jill was welcomed to attend."

[Twey]

It's an idiom. Technically, "long time, no see" is wrong, since "no" can't be applied to a verb (it would be acceptable were "see" to be shifted to a gerund form ["no seeing"]). As for "long time," a period of time has to be qualified with sometime like "for," so the "correct" sentence would be "no seeing for a long time" (strange though it may sound).

However, as an idiom, it transcends the necessity for grammatical correctness: it has meaning as a whole, and whether the individual parts of it are correct or not is meaningless.

[joycie]

I also noticed a lot of news articles quote a person's name differently in the same article. Take for instance the article below, quoted as Posh and Victoria (full name " Posh Spice Victoria"). It can be quite confusing at times. When I saw the name Victoria, I have to refer to the earlier part of the article for her full name to confirm that it's referring to the same person.

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=182241

Posh Spice Victoria Beckham has told pals ........

It was rumoured that Posh and hubby David Beckham........

But now friends of Posh are saying.....

It comes after mum-of-three Victoria, 32, laughed off reports she had landed a role as an extra-terrestrial bride in a Scientology film made by Tom Cruise...

[BLiZZaRD]

That, now transcends into Journalism technique. The first time you use someones name in an article you use the whole, complete name. There after you use the last name only.

As for using the nick-name, this is accepted as opposed to the last name when the sentence structure is referring to a quote, or a less than formal form of the person. As such you can not use the nick name when you are stating a fact or similar.

So saying: Posh's friend said she was really lazy. Is okay, so is "Victoria was doing drugs last weekend."

But you wouldn't say: The ex-husband of Posh is filing for contempt on Tuesday.