The phrase "build up from scratch" is correct and usable in written English.
You can use it when you want to describe the process of starting something from nothing and creating it up to a finished product. Example sentence: It was challenging, but we managed to build our business up from scratch.
Only a grammar containing both phrase structure and transformation rules, Chomsky argued, could generate a natural language — 'generate' in the sense that by stepwise application of the rules, one could in principle build up from scratch all and only the sentences that the language contains.
His father renounced 'childish things' in order to build up from scratch his own electrical engineering company, now specialising in reducing electricity bills for large companies.
I remember spending a summer 15 years ago working in his car dealership, a business he had built up from scratch.
Second, charter schools have to be built up from scratch; at the time the statistics were gathered most were only a few years old.
In interviews conducted away from Afghan or foreign troops, residents of Zabul generally approved of the Afghan National Army, a multiethnic force that has been built up from scratch since 2002.
'Personally, I think the nearest a journo will get to Mike Ashley is about the firing distance of an AK47,' says Dave Richardson, the chairman of Sports Direct - the £1.9bn sportswear company that Ashley built up from scratch.
But Lord Saatchi and his brother Charles got carried away, launching an audacious bid for Midland Bank, and found themselves booted out of the agency they had built up from scratch.
Polly Peck, the company that Nadir built up from scratch, dealt in everything from fruit to fashion and was one of the biggest City success stories of the 1980s, delivering returns to shareholders of up to 1,000 times their original investment.
Ben Gazzara is the star of Killing, the story of the owner of The Crazy Horse West, a failing LA strip joint he is determined to keep open because it's the only thing he's built up from scratch in his somewhat tawdry life.
