-2

Find the mistake:

It's essential for us to book tickets for the theatre in advance .

I see no mistake here, can anybody help me find the mistake?

herisson
  • 81,803
Bessada R.Bakhiet
  • 1
  • 4
    Who told you there was a mistake? – RaceYouAnytime Apr 24 '17 at 22:27
  • You’ve spelled *theater* wrong. ;-) (Also you’ve got a space before the ending period. And it seems to be on purpose since you’ve done it with the comma and the question mark as well.) – Jim Apr 24 '17 at 22:30
  • 1
    @Jim even some US theatres use the standard UK spelling. I hope you were joking here. – Edwin Ashworth Apr 24 '17 at 22:35
  • Okay ✌ , So , is there a mistake in this sentence ??! – Bessada R.Bakhiet Apr 24 '17 at 22:39
  • @EdwinAshworth - That’s what the winking smiley was supposed to indicate. – Jim Apr 24 '17 at 22:41
  • Is someone saying they want *to the theatre* instead of *for*? – Jim Apr 24 '17 at 22:43
  • No mistake, but only bemused grammarians and humble myself! – English Student Apr 24 '17 at 22:52
  • You can pay on the door, perhaps. – Edwin Ashworth Apr 24 '17 at 22:58
  • @Jim -- theater refers to a place where movies are shown while theatre is the place where live actors sing and dance and act. Reference: Young People's Teen Musical Theatre Company (http://yptmtc.org/) At least, that's the way it is around here (San Francisco, California). – Roger Sinasohn Apr 24 '17 at 23:18
  • 1
    @RogerSinasohn - Interesting data: http://grammarist.com/spelling/theater-theatre/ – Jim Apr 24 '17 at 23:51
  • Very interesting indeed. We (the board of directors of the YPTMTC) have had a number of discussions on the topic, generally with non-theatre people (parents, mostly) showing confusion while those more involved with one or more theatre companies personally used the movie - theater/show - theatre distinction. There may still be places on the website where the web designer left "theater" instead of "theatre," but there aren't supposed to be. – Roger Sinasohn Apr 24 '17 at 23:56

2 Answers2

3

It's entirely grammatical. Those two fors in different senses (one as a subordinator, the other as a preposition) excite my horror aequi, and I'd rewrite as "It's essential for us to reserve theatre tickets in advance" or "It's essential that we reserve tickets for the theatre in advance" or even "It's essential that we reserve theatre tickets in advance"—but this is a stylistic matter, not an error.

StoneyB on hiatus
  • 68,905
  • So we still have not an obvious point lead us to say there is an grammatical mistake ! Right?? – Bessada R.Bakhiet Apr 24 '17 at 22:52
  • No mistake, but only bemused grammarians and humble myself! (is humble myself a grammatically or idiomatically sound way to refer to oneself in an expression of personal modesty? My father says it all the time, as in "the only Ph.D holder in this august audience is humble myself" -- I could not find this expression on google search, which is dominated by the religious verb "to humble myself (before rhe Lord)" -- if this is not the place for this topic, I shall post it as a question, if necessary.) – English Student Apr 24 '17 at 23:03
  • 3
    @EnglishStudent: to me, "my humble self" sounds more natural. But in "the only Ph.D holder in this august audience is humble myself/my humble self" it looks like false modesty. – herisson Apr 24 '17 at 23:08
  • My father says it is an old-fashioned courtly British way of referring to on self, whether with real or false modesty (and in the case of the Ph.D, some real sarcasm) -- he learnt his English in newly post-independent India, mainly by reading British literature -- what I want to know is whether you experts at EL & U have heard it before, and can say it is idiomatically sound? – English Student Apr 24 '17 at 23:17
  • @EnglishStudent I think it's a tad confusing because it sounds like "humble" is being used as a verb. I humble myself before the bemused grammarians. You could just write "me." As in, "The only people here are you and me." – RaceYouAnytime Apr 24 '17 at 23:53
  • @English Student: I've read "my humble self" in British literature, but it sounds very old-fashioned. I've never heard "humble myself" in the way you are using it (native speaker of US English here, mainly BosWash corridor) -- but I would not be confused if I heard it. – ab2 Apr 24 '17 at 23:54
  • Thank you. I have now posted it as a question at https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/386262/is-humble-myself-idiomatically-sound to follow accepted method and attract more replies. – English Student Apr 24 '17 at 23:57
1

The consensus of our experts as read in the earlier answer and the above comments seems very much to be that there is no mistake here.

English Student
  • 7,372