Dubai

Question

When I was working in the rural part of Dubai about 50 minutes away from the city central. The city central was where the main office is/was. I had to commute by bus almost everyday to the office and it wasn't a pleasant experience.

Please proofread.

Thank you.

CalifJim · Accepted Answer

The first sentence isn't really a sentence. It just says when something happened without saying what happened.

It's easy to make your problem disappear:

I used to work in a rural part of Dubai about 50 minutes from the city center. I had to commute by bus to the main office in the city center almost every day, and it wasn't a pleasant experience.

But if you really want it, you can have:

The city center was where the main office was.
OR
The city center is where the main office is.

There is no good reason not to match tenses, and since you're telling a story of something in the past, it's probably better to keep everything in the past. (Nobody will think that the office moved after you left Dubai.)

CJ

PreciousJones · Answer

CalifJim I had to commute by bus to the main office in the city center almost every day, and it wasn't a pleasant experience.

I noticed how you changed the wording of :

I had to commute by bus almost everyday to the main office in the city center, and it wasn't a pleasant experience.

to

I had to commute by bus to the main office in the city center almost every day, and it wasn't a pleasant experience.

Is the first sentence grammatically incorrect or you just made the sentence more idiomatic with a better flow?

Which one is correct?

CalifJim · Answer

PreciousJonesIs the first sentence grammatically incorrect or you just made the sentence more idiomatic with a better flow?

Better flow. Phrases like "almost every day", which indicate frequency, are usually more idiomatic at the end, in this case, after you've already said where the bus was going.

CJ

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