• farmgineer@nord.pub
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    4 hours ago

    Shouldn’t it be ‘after having been together’?

    What is ‘at the same time’ referring to in that sentence? They wanted to break up at the same time (as in both had the idea)? They wanted to break up at the same time on the clock to continue the theme of things being same-y?

    The boy is due north of what? The place? The girl? Also, the girl should be wondering about her decision, I think.

    (I don’t even speak English every day anymore, so I could be wrong).

    • Bonsoir@lemmy.ca
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      4 hours ago

      They said goodbye at a given position and are then leaving each in a different direction. They start to move at the same time from the same point.

      • NoSpotOfGround@lemmy.world
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        3 hours ago

        Wait, we know their position exactly? That means we have no idea what their velocities are!

        Actually, their velocities are specified precisely in the problem description.

        What? Velocity too? Now we know nothing!!

    • misericordiae@literature.cafe
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      3 hours ago

      (I don’t even speak English every day anymore, so I could be wrong).

      You’re not wrong. I think some of it is the difference between casual speech and formal writing (people are more likely to say “after being” but write “after having been”, especially in published work)**, but some of it is also just poorly phrased. It makes enough sense to a native speaker to get what the problem is asking, though.

      __

      ** I think the first may be correct in some cases, but idk the rule.

      • farmgineer@nord.pub
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        1 hour ago

        It only bothered me because I saw that it was a school assignment and I thought it would be to a higher standard. In casual speech, I don’t really care unless the meaning is unclear.