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To all the native English speaking people here I have the following English grammar question:

Is the following sentence correct?    "I will post puzzles on even numbered weeks only."
Or is this sentence the correct one?  "I will post puzzles in even numbered weeks only."

BTW: Hopefully I have gotten the position of "only" correct.

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Hi BørgeBoth sound OK to me but just a bit cumbersome since I'm not familiar with "numbered weeks".

What about, "I will post even numbered puzzles only", or "I will post puzzles every second week only". Depends on the context as to which is correct - the first implies someone else will post the odd numbered puzzles, the second could mean there will be no puzzles the other week (depends on context).

Yes. It can also go at other places in the sentence, depending on how much emphasis you want to give it I guess (but I hear very little difference in the following examples). It can get quite tricky in these two alt. sentences.

We could say, "I will post only even numbered puzzles" but not "I will post only puzzles every second week" (unless you will post something else with the puzzles the first weeks).

The "only" could go in even earlier, "I will only post even numbered puzzles".

Long answer to a "simple" grammar question!

Good luck with lightening your workload!
Ed

Ed,
Thanks for your thorough answer.


I assume that you also in Australia number the weeks of each year from 1 to 52/53?
In a "normal" year you then have 26 weeks with odd numbers and 26 weeks with even numbers.

What is your collective term for all the 26 weeks with even numbers?

The weeks with even numbers, or the even numbered weeks, or ?

Without hesitating I would for instance also say:
The even numbered houses are on one side of the road and the odd numbered ones are on the other side.
(Although I do not know if this is also the common scheme in Australia.)

Would you prefer something like?
The houses with even numbers are one one side of the road and the ones with odd numbers are on the other side.

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No! I have absolutely no clue what week of the year it is. Had to look up http://www.weekofyear.com/ to find out. Though I think my pay gets worked out based on the calendar week number. It is just an administrative tool and not part of general knowledge/information. I'll see how often it pops up this week now that you've made me aware of it.

Is it general knowledge where you are - (sorry, can't remember which country )?

These both sound fine but the context would have to tell me that you are talking about even/odd weeks of the year.

It is! Though don't know how they choose which side are the odds.

Both sentences sound great.

Cheers
Ed

PS - Congratulations on getting to 500 posts!

I currently live in Germany and my impression is that most adults and many teenagers know that a year has 52 or 53 weeks, and that they are numbered starting with 1. Exactly which week number it is at a given time is probably not common knowledge, unless your profession, shift rotation plan, etc. requires this knowledge. I assume that in most European countries the knowledge regarding weeks is similar to that in Germany. I cannot remember the last time I saw a calender not also stating week numbers.
My experience is that for school holidays, still several months away, many people in Germany do not know the exact start and end dates, but know in which calender week(s) the holiday is.

In Wikipedia I found the following:
I have been trying to think back to my youth and childhood, and I am pretty sure that I even as pre-teenager knew that a year had 52/53 weeks (albeit not why) and that they are numbered starting with 1. In dry summers, watering restrictions applied, so that owners of even numbered houses were allowed only to water their garden in even numbered weeks, and owners of odd numbered houses only in odd numbered weeks.

After graduating from university, I started working for Control Data Corporation (CDC). There I really became aware of week numbers. One reason was that I every week had to fill out a weekly time sheet and expense report detailing every project I had worked on that week, and all kinds of traveling and other expenses I had occurred. Two of the fields in the time sheet form were year and week number. Back in those "good old days of large mainframe computers" one of the first things a backup program did was calculating the current week number from the current date. This since backup tapes were rotated in a 4 or 5 week schedule.

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That's pretty much the way it is in the U.S. We sometimes refer to "the third full week in April", but no one here ever refers to the week of the year.


I've NEVER seen a calendar that shows week numbers. A few have the Julian day of the year for each day (in very tiny print), and perhaps the number of days left in the year, but that's all.


In the U.S., watering restrictions are based on even-numbered or odd-numbered days.


My father also worked for CDC while I was growing up, but I don't ever remember him mentioning week numbers. For most people that wouldn't be particularly surprising, but for him, I'm surprised that he wouldn't consider it essential for me to know the week numbers if he used them at work.

Either is correct, but the first one sounds a bit more awkward to me. I might even consider using "for" instead if "in" or "on".


It's correct, but in the U.S., the more common position would be before the word "even". Any other position would be incorrect for your intended meaning. (This is a prime example of a case in which Americans are getting sloppy with their grammar. Many Americans would have said, "I will only post puzzles in even-numbered weeks", but that would be incorrect.)

I don't know how it is in other English-speaking countries, but in the U.S., "even-numbered" is hyphenated.

No, that would change the meaning. That would imply something like, "I will only post even numbered puzzles, but I will not solve them." In that position the "only" would apply to the word "post" rather than to the word "even".

After some searching I found an almost mint condition unused Time Sheet form. HERE A SCAN OF IT
In a cardboard box in the attic I probably have a half used pad of them, but this should suffice.

The Time Sheet came in pads with a carbon-paper included. In a pad they were in pairs, one white (original) and one yellow (carbon copy).
When your manager had signed it, it was punched and electronically transmitted to Minneapolis for processing. Some days later the processed version was printed locally and you got it in your real hardware in box. You had to check the processed printout against your carbon copy and report any discrepancies to the audit department, which you could do using CDC's own e-mail system called cdcmail. Very similar to todays e-mail, except you could only write to CDC employees, and you had to keep paper copies. There were no electronic storage.

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Hmmm. . . How long ago was this? My father worked there in the late 60's.