In Russian (my native language) there are two words – "день" and "сутки". First means day, just a day, probably lightest part of it, second – 24 hours from 00:00 to 00:00. There is a strict difference between them. As I tried all of the dictionaries – in English there is a single word "day" for both meanings. Is it true? Are there no two different words for a light part of day and for whole day 00:00-00:00?
Learn English – Day vs 24h day
datestimeword-choiceword-meaning
Related Solutions
They have identical meaning. Before long is poetic (and maybe slightly archaic). I imagine my grandfather saying it. It can be abbreviated 'ere long to be even more poetic.
Shakespeare's 73rd sonnet ends:
This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well, which thou must leave ere long.
So in common usage, I'd stick with soon.
The meanings can overlap.
To "quote" is to repeat someone else's words, in a way that indicates that you are repeating someone else's words, as opposed to incorporating them into your own work without any explicit identification that they are copied. (This could be plagiarism or it could be an allusion, but that's a different issue.)
To "cite" is to reference some other work. You may be quoting it word-for-word or you may simply be referring to it. "Cite" can be used to mean "quote", but it would rarely be used if you gave a quote without a reference, and it can be used when you give a reference without a quote.
Examples: "As Winston Churchill said, 'I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat.'" This is unquestionably a quote. It might be called a citation.
"According to Barclay's Famous Quotations, Winston Churchill once said, 'I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat." This is both a quote and a citation.
"In his History of Britain, Charles Stover says that Churchill called on the British people to be willing to make sacrifices." This is a citation but not a quote. It is not a quote because we are not repeating any exact words.
And to be complete: If I wrote a novel, and at some point in the novel I write, "General Framnitz urged his soldiers to fight on. 'I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and the billions of dollars of loot that we will get when we take the city'", that would be an allusion and not a quote, because I am not making any clear reference to Mr Churchill, and because I'm adapting the quote for my own purposes.
A citation can be informal like my examples here, "As he said in ...", or it could be a more formal reference, like "See Stover, Charles. History of Britain. Fwacbar Publishing, 1964, pp 85-86" (The exact formatting varying depending on what style guide you're using, if any.)
Best Answer
The question succinctly could be expressed like this: How does one say сутки in English? That's really what the original poster is asking as this is one of the most common questions asked by Russian speakers who are new to English. He's just not being very clear about it (but that's fine).
Yes, it's true. The word сутки in Russian means an amount of time that equals 24 hours and is often used synonymously with the word день which in meaning is exactly equivalent to the English word day. By the same token, the word day in English is defined as exactly a 24-hour period when viewed as a length of time and, to the best of my knowledge, no other special term like сутки in Russian that specifically refers to a 24-hour time period exists in English. So, day does cover both meanings and, in general, you're really going to have to translate both день and cутки using a single word, day, when talking about a 24-hour period for which Russians have a special term.
However, all is not lost. In situations where you want to be more specific, you can qualify the word day by adding additional time-related information to it to make it more precise timewise. In other words, you would say something like this: entire day, 24-hour day (this one sounds a little bit tautological, though) or, if you want to be more technical, calendar day. Better yet, you could even say: twenty-four hour period or simply twenty-four hours (I think twenty-four hours is the exact English translation of сутки).
Examples:
Here's one way to understand the problem. And this is just an example. Since the arrival of the Internet where there is really no difference between night and day, greetings like "Доброго всем времени суток!", which literally translates as "Good 24-hour day, everybody!" (not idiomatic English at all), have become very popular. And a lot of people learning English often ask how do you say the exact same thing in English? The answer is you can't. You simply have to say "Good day, everybody!" But the thing is that Russian has that expression too ("Добрый день всем!") which is distinct from the one used on the Internet. So, how to reconcile this situation is not obvious.