15 February

By or until? Getting to the bottom of a common mistake

How would you translate the following German sentence into English? Ich brauche den Bericht bis Ende des Monats. Did you come up with I need the report until the end of the month? I’d be surprised if you were the only one, but it should in fact be I need the report by the end of the month. So […]

15 September

Mind your Ps and Qs

As you’ve probably noticed, ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ are used a lot by English native speakers. It’s easy enough to add a generous sprinkling of ‘thank yous‘ to your English emails: Thank you for getting in touch. Thanks for calling. Thank you very much for all your support. Many thanks for making my stay so enjoyable. […]