writing

Question

Julius Caesar's calendar was made right with the sun again by taking 10 days away from it.Correct the sentence.Thanks a lot.

Deadrat · Accepted Answer

It's grammatically correct, so what do you think is wrong with it?  (Hint:  it doesn't say what you expect it to.)

Anonymous · Answer

I expected it like this:
Julius Caesar's calendar was made with the sun again by 10 days being taken away from it.

Deadrat · Answer

The earth take close to 365 1/4 days to make one revolution around the sun, but the calendar only marks out full days. So four complete revolutions take 4 * 365 1/4 = 1461 days, but the calendar records a complete year in 4*365 = 1460 days. So every four years, the calendar records January 1 another day earlier. In 100 or so of these four-year periods, January 1 is in the summer (long days, short nights). But January 1 is supposed to be in the winter (short days, long nights). Maybe you wouldn't care, but farmers relying on the calendar for planting and harvesting wouldn't be happy.

"Julius Caesar's calendar was made right with the sun again" means that Caesar changed the calendar so that January 1 was back in the winter. We still have one of his reforms, the leap day. Every four years we get an extra day in February.

In the sentence, what it is the grammatical antecedent to the last word, "it"? That is, what does "it" refer to based on the sentence structure?

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