"I came in, needing my fingerprints and background check done. I made an appointment, from the moment I walked in the front desk lady was extremely rude and not helpful with what I needed done. She scanned my fingerprints and did not provide me with a fingerprint card. I didn't even get my background check done because she said I was unable to do so. My school provides me with free fingerprinting and background checks through this establishment, when I called them to see why I was not provided a background check at this facility. They said the facility (this front desk lady) did it completely wrong. \n\nI will be rescheduling... not at this locations. The costumer service was the worst I've had in a long time."
If so, my analysis amounts to a rule in search of actual usage—a prescription rather than a description. In any event, the impressive rise of "free of" against "free from" over the past 100 years suggests that the English-speaking world has become more receptive to using "free of" in place of "free from" during that period.
I don't think there's any difference in meaning, although "free of charges" is much less common than "free of charge". Regarding your second question about context: given that English normally likes to adopt the shortest phrasing possible, the longer form "free of charge" can be used as a means of drawing attention to the lack of demand for ...
The fact that it was well-established long before OP's 1930s movies is attested by this sentence in the Transactions of the Annual Meeting from the South Carolina Bar Association, 1886 And to-day, “free white and twenty-one,” that slang phrase, is no longer broad enough to include the voters in this country.
Similarly, “free education” is funded by the state (which is ultimately financed by taxpayers) and taught in state-run schools called state schools whereas schools that charge tuition fees are termed private schools. A private school in the US typically means fee-taking. Confusingly, in the UK, they are known as public schools.
In the context such as "free press", it means libre from censorship, "gluten-free" means libre from gluten and so on. Then there is "free stuff", why is the same word used?
My company gives out free promotional items with the company name on it. Is this stuff called company swag or schwag? It seems that both come up as common usages—Google searching indicates that the
If you are storing documents, however, you should choose either the mediumtext or longtext type. Could you please tell me what free-form data entry is? I know what data entry is per se - when data is fed into some kind of electronic system for processing - but I don't know how to understand the term free-form. Any thoughts? Thank you.
I want to make a official call and ask the other person whether he is free or not at that particular time. I think asking, “Are you free now?” does't sound formal. So, are there any alternatives to...