Keep tabs on

When you keep tabs on someone/something you watch it/them very carefully. Police keep tabs on criminals and parents keep tabs on their kids.
Maybe this little guy likes to keep tabs on the squirrels in the backyard.

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Phrase: Keep tabs on 

Have you thought about who or what you would keep tabs on?

Some people are lucky enough to have had a telescope when they were kids.

I suppose they used their ‘scopes’ to keep tabs on the waxing and waning of the moon, Halley’s Comet or some other astronomical stuff.


To be clear from the beginning, when you keep tabs on someone or something, you watch it or them very carefully.


Imagine a police officer following someone they know is doing illegal things.

The police must catch them in the act before arresting them, so they follow them very carefully.

Everywhere the suspected criminal goes, a police officer keeps tabs on them.

The officer takes pictures, records the date and time and notes any people that the suspect comes into contact with.

That’s what it means to keep tabs on someone.

To go back to my original question, if you had a telescope, who or what would you keep tabs on?

Don’t tell me you would watch the pretty girl or handsome boy next door.

We don’t want to go there.

As for myself, if by some miracle Santa were to bring me a telescope this Christmas, I’d probably use it to keep tabs on the local Japanese monkey troupe that lives in the mountains around my home.

They often make a lot of racket, shaking trees, screaming, fighting and driving my Shiba Inu, Sora, crazy at night.

I’d like to see firsthand what they get up to.

I suppose I could also use a telescope to spy on the Japanese Pond Turtles in the river.

From what I can see, without a ‘scope,’ they like to hang out and sun themselves.

It might be nice to keep tabs on them to see who stays around and who leaves.


Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test

This post is understandable by someone with at least a 7th-grade education (age 12).  

On the Flesch-Kincaid reading-ease test, this post scores 75.  

The easier a passage is to read, the higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100.



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