Where to Hide an Example Sentence in English Writing

We’ve all heard that we should meet new people. But what does it really mean to meet someone or to converse with them? To start a dialogue or speak with somebody new. (The act or condition of meeting somebody new)

I think it’s safe to say that for many of us, meeting new people and conversing with them is a fairly regular part of our social life. It occurs every time we go out to a party, a dinner with friends or even when we are queued up at the check-in counter at the airport. But have you ever stopped to consider just how often you actually meet people in day-to-day life and then forget about them? If you have, you probably hide examples of your meeting new people in your everyday life.

Here’s one example: If you work in an office, you meet lots of very interesting people on a daily basis. For example, you wouldn’t ever meet a jaguar rancher if you were stuck in a big office building. You wouldn’t ever meet a guy who had just won the lottery if you happened to be in the library. But what about unexpected moments? Have you ever met the man who sat next to you in the queue at the supermarket, or the girl you bumped into as you walked past in the shopping mall?

So where do we put these example sentences? I think we can safely hide these examples from most of us. For example, we might consciously ‘hide’ the fact that we met a new boy last week. This can come across as a clever trick, depending on whether you are talking about this boy in a positive or negative light. However, unless you are deliberately making use of this technique, it’s unlikely that you will ever come across this example.

If, for example, you are going to use the word ‘meet’ in a list of examples, then I suggest that you also introduce a built-in negative. For example: “We met at college last week.” Or “I did not meet him.” Both of these can be used without the negative to avoid potential confusion. Of course, you only need to use the negative when you really mean to say ‘did not meet’.

So, the trick is to use negatives to hide examples. You can use this when you need to say, “I did not meet him” but you also want to avoid being accused of lying. For example: “I do not know where he is since last Sunday.” If you do not introduce your own opinion, then you are more likely to be asked questions about the source of your information. For this reason, it pays to know the origin of your information, so that you can confidently answer straightforward questions like “Where did you hear this information?”