A more reasonable interpretation would be after a fire has already occurred once in that room, place one near the first outbreak for more convenient extinguishing next time. This makes most sense in areas where fires are reasonably common and not easily contained -- such as near commercial establishment kitchens or outdoor barbeque pits, for instance.
I'm getting rather tired Elizabeth san, so please excuse my brevity and frankness, but I must make myself clear. I cannot agree with a single word of this, I can only think you are trying to pull me leg!!!
No native English speaker is going to read "In case of a fire, place an extinguisher in the room" as the endorsement of the magical force of an extinguisher -- particularly one that that is small, handheld and isn't already known to possess hypernatural super spiritual powers.
Again, clearly there is a lot of humour here, I must admit I had a good chuckle at the last part!!
But as for the sentence 'In case of a fire, place an extinguisher in the room' this goes against everything i've been trying to explain in this thread - we would never see this in Britain, and i'm rather confused as to how you might have deduced this from what i've written...
Once again, I hope not to debate these points any more on this thread. I think i've provided (with a very important interjection from Kinsao san!) a more-or-less definitive
British English version of what these two, distinct phrases mean and how they can be used.
I started with my own thoughts on the matters-at-hand, then consulted the Oxford and Cambridge dictionaries, and now i've confirmed things with Michael Swan's
Practical English Usage. This last one is a kind of Bible to a great many teachers of English to foreigners around the world, (including many teachers from the States, Canada, Oz and NZ that I worked alongside in Japan).
Practical English Usage largely confirms what i've previously written, just adding some extra points:
in British English, in case and if are normally used in quite different ways.
'I do A in case B happens' usually means 'I do A first because B might happen later'. A is first.
'I do A if B happens' means 'I do A if B has already happened'. B is first.
Compare:
- Let's buy a bottle of wine in case Roger comes.
(=Let's buy some wine now because Roger might come later.)
- Let's buy a bottle of wine if Roger comes. (=We'll wait and see. If Roger comes, then we'll buy the wine. If he doesn't, we won't.)
In American English, in case can sometimes be used in the same way as if.
In case the house burns down, we'll get the insurance money. (GB If...)
Practical English Usage also identifies
(just) in case as a conjunction, while
in case of is a prepositional phrase - another reason not to mix them/mix them up!
These are probably* my final words on this thread! Imvho, the British English side of things is all present and correct. Again, anybody should feel free to PM me about all this if you'd like to discuss things further. I don't see the value of complicating things more on a thread that
should be centred on the OP's valid questions about just one small point of international English usage (albeit quite a tricky one!)
And to further complicate matters lol, here is another interpretation of giving a child a toy in case it starts crying, you could quite easily say this "Give the child this toy to stop him crying"
Over to you mos.
The gentleman that rests within my soul would
like to say to you, dear EH:
'thank you kindly Sir for your input. You are quite right, there are a very many possible variations on the theme, and I did not mean to suggest otherwise, or that my examples were in any way comprehensive. Nevertheless, here you have generously provided, for our delectation, yet another equally-valid sentence (albeit without an in-depth explanation, but that is by-the-by).'
Unfortunately, what i'm actually thinking is:
'
Don't you bl00dy start as well!!
lol, j/ks sir
made of stone,
OVER AND OUT
* I do still reserve the right to reply
just in case someone adds something worth replying to!!
:smoke:
