{"id":73438,"date":"2020-03-24T10:35:17","date_gmt":"2020-03-24T10:35:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/?p=73438"},"modified":"2020-03-24T10:35:17","modified_gmt":"2020-03-24T10:35:17","slug":"surely-english-usage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/surely-english-usage\/","title":{"rendered":"Surely | English Usage"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><b>Surely<\/b>\u00a0does not mean the same as<b>\u00a0certainly<\/b>. There is usually a difference.<\/p>\n<p>Compare:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>That is<b>\u00a0certainly<\/b>\u00a0Jane\u2019s boyfriend. (= I know that is Jane\u2019s boyfriend.)<\/li>\n<li><b>Surely<\/b>\u00a0that is Jane\u2019s boyfriend? (That really seems to be Jane\u2019s boyfriend. How surprising!)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Sentences with\u00a0<b>surely<\/b>\u00a0often have question marks. They are used to say that the speaker believes something in spite reasons to believe the opposite.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><b>Surely<\/b>\u00a0that is James over there? I thought he was in Germany.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Surely not<\/b>\u00a0expresses difficulty in believing something.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><b>Surely\u00a0<\/b>he is<b>\u00a0not<\/b>\u00a0going to divorce his wife? (= I can\u2019t believe that he is going to divorce his wife.)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In American English,<b>\u00a0surely<\/b>\u00a0can mean\u00a0<b>certainly\u00a0<\/b>in replies.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\u2018Could you help me?\u2019\u00a0<b>\u2018Surely \/ certainly.\u2019<\/b><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Surely\u00a0does not mean the same as\u00a0certainly. There is usually a difference. Compare: That is\u00a0certainly\u00a0Jane\u2019s boyfriend. (= I know that is Jane\u2019s boyfriend.) Surely\u00a0that is Jane\u2019s boyfriend? (That really seems to be Jane\u2019s boyfriend. How&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[251],"tags":[2257,2258,2259],"class_list":["post-73438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-grammar","tag-surely","tag-surely-grammar","tag-surely-usage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73438"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73438\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":73439,"href":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73438\/revisions\/73439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}