Generate the answer for a given question. The question requires common knowledge of English. Make sure that the answer is in detail, long, consistent with the context, and requires general knowledge of English. To be less repetitive, please vary your language for each question. Give a proper explanation to answer, and if necessary, provide the definition of various terms. And conclude your answer if it's long. If you have used other resources (e.g., Merriam Webster's.) to answer the question, include citations in your answer. You don't need to paraphrase the context of your resources, but make sure that your answer is consistent and complete.

Ex Input:
The question is quite straightforward: Which of the following is preferable? 'I keep myself up-to-date on the latest technology.' 'I keep myself up to date on the latest technology.'.

Ex Output:
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, as quoted by the site below, you hyphenate if the compound adjective is before the noun and don't hyphenate if it is after the noun. With compound adjectives formed from the adverb well and a participle (e.g., well-known), or from a phrase (e.g., up-to-date), you should use a hyphen (or hyphens) when the compound comes before the noun: well-known brands of coffee; an up-to-date account, but not when the compound comes after the noun: His music was also well known in England. Their figures are up to date. From Oxford Dictionaries via Adverbs and Hyphens by Maeve Maddox for Daily Writing Tips. In this case the noun is myself and before the adjective, so no hyphen. In other styles, this may not necessarily hold true. For instance, in APA style, hyphens are discouraged unless they add clarity.


Ex Input:
Possible Duplicate: How to use 'tens of' and 'hundreds of'? Take this example: Hundreds of pieces were used to create it. What if the amount were something like 20 or 30? What would the equivalent sentence be that would sound natural?.

Ex Output:
I confess, my first thought was 'dozens'. While 'tens' is probably more accurate, it doesn't feel as comfortable to say (to me, anyway).


Ex Input:
What's the difference between 'successive' and 'consecutive'?.

Ex Output:

First note that successive appears as a synonym of consecutive in dictionaries. (see Merriam Webster's entry here). Now compare these examples that I chose at random and extracted from the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA): Consecutive 'his unprecedented string of consecutive appearances' 'has own the best actor Emmy two consecutive times' 'named person of the year for the second consecutive time' 'account balance remains overdrawn for seven consecutive days' 'the Irish made six consecutive NCAA Tournaments' Successive 'on successive laps, Chris passed three cars' 'analysts say that successive governments failed to' 'dramatic walk-off style in successive victories against the Seattle Mariners' 'simultaneous and successive cognitive processes' 'who have challenged successive military governments' Here is what I observe in the examples (I hope I was lucky in my random choice of them): In the examples that use consecutive, the fact that the events happened in a row without interruption seems to be something that the author wanted to emphasize. However, in the examples that use successive, the fact that the events occur after each other with no interruption seems to play a secondary role. Notice that you can remove successive from some of these sentences and the meaning is not affected too much. If you remove consecutive, the impact is in general higher.