Re: Cases and Prepositions (amongst others)
| From: | Padraic Brown <pbrown@...> |
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| Date: | Wednesday, June 7, 2000, 17:17 |
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On Wed, 7 Jun 2000, Nik Taylor wrote:
>Tom Wier wrote:
>> There is
>> no reason, as far as I can see, why most American English speakers
>> say 'in line', while many New Yorkers say 'on line'
>
>I've often wondered, how do New Yorkers distinguish between being
>"online" and being "on line"?
One has to do with electronic media - almost exclusively computer
oriented - while the other has to do with physically queueing up.
Given some kind of context, I shouldn't think there'd be any
confusion.
I don't personally use "on line" to mean queueing up, but have heard
it with some frequency here and understand it. I'd spell them both
the same, i.e., "on line".
Padraic.
>--
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