The
Grammar
Logs
# 335

QUESTION
Can 'all but' be used as 'almost' and as 'certainly not' ? Examples:
  • He is all but elected.
  • He will almost certainly be elected.
  • He is all but clumsy.
  • He is certainly not clumsy.
Thanks.

P.S. I love your website.

SOURCE OF QUESTION & DATE OF RESPONSE
New York, New York Wed, Jul 21, 1999
GRAMMAR'S RESPONSE
My dictionaries (not the greatest in the world) give no indication that this phrase can be used to mean "certainly not." It means "very little short of," as in your first example.

Authority for this note: Oxford American Dictionary: Oxford University Press, New York. 1980.


QUESTION
I was chastised for the way I used "remember" in this sentence:
Dave asked me to remember him to you.
I was told this is an archaic usage. What do you say?
SOURCE OF QUESTION & DATE OF RESPONSE
Memphis, Tennessee Fri, Jul 23, 1999
GRAMMAR'S RESPONSE
The word "remember" has a time-honored meaning of "to convey greetings from." It is an elegant construction, but it is not archaic.

QUESTION
When should you put a comma before the word "with" in a sentence? When the whole phrase modifies an independent clause? For example,
  • "Decorate the room like a cruise ship with blue balloons for water." or
  • "You can run down the street with bells on."
Do you ever need to watch for the reader accidentally seeing, "...the street with bells on," rather than "run with bells on?" Some things just catch me up. I need your wisdom.
SOURCE OF QUESTION & DATE OF RESPONSE
Denver, Colorado Fri, Jul 23, 1999
GRAMMAR'S RESPONSE
The placement of modifying phrases—whether they begin with "with" or anything else—can be important to the meaning of a sentence. Does the cruise ship have blue balloons for water, does the street have bells on? Well, no, we can probably figure out those sentences, but the first one might have done with a dash after "ship" to denote that we are tacking on this decorative detail. And the second example could have put bells on your shoes—"run down the street with bells on your shoes"—to avoid that problem. If you are alert to the potential problems of ambiguous modification (and you certainly seem to be so), you can usually find an easy way around the problem, either through punctuation, adding additional words, or more careful placement of the modifying phrase.

QUESTION
  1. There was no feeling of life in the house.
  2. There was no sign of life in the house.
Questions:
  1. Which of the two sentences above is right?
  2. If both are right, is there any difference in meaning?
  3. If they are much the same meaning, which is better [more common]?
SOURCE OF QUESTION & DATE OF RESPONSE
Urayasu, Chiba, Japan Fri, Jul 23, 1999
GRAMMAR'S RESPONSE
They're both right, but they mean different things. "Sign of life" would mean that there are no pieces of evidence that there are people living in the house: no trash recently thrown in the garbage bin, no half-eaten sandwich on the counter, no recently slept-in, unmade bed, etc. "Feeling of life" would mean that there is no energy to the place. Even though there may be people lying around, watching TV, napping in the den, there is no vitality to the place.

QUESTION
A main clause separated from its dependent clause by a period?

In the following: "I learned a very ugly word in college. A denigrating noun that compared a race of people to a large, black beetle, considered a destructive pest in Mexico and South America." the foregoing is very much in need of revision.

The revision might proceed along these lines: "a denigrating noun" is a nonrestrictive appositive of "word." A comma should replace the period following "college." The relative pronoun "that" has "noun" as its antecedent. "That" also serves as the subject of the subordinate clause. The direct object "race" is modified by the prepositional phrases "of people" and "to beetle."

I run into trouble with my analysis with the following: "considered a destructive pest in Mexico and South America." I recognize "considered" as a past participle and that the whole construction bears an adjectival relationship to "beetle," but I can't assign the object "pest" to the past participle "considered."

Any help will be appreciated.

SOURCE OF QUESTION & DATE OF RESPONSE
Unknown Fri, Jul 23, 1999
GRAMMAR'S RESPONSE
Your instincts are right here: the participial phrase beginning with "considered a destructive pest" cannot modify something within itself. It modifies "beetle," and probably should not be separated from "beetle" by that unnecessary comma. Maybe the end of that sentence could be cleaned up by changing it to a pre-noun modifier: "a large, destructive black beetle of Mexico and South America."

QUESTION
I am in the process of writing my resume. One of the sentences reads as follows:
Manage approximately 200 accounts, make investment recommendations, employing fundamental and technical research analysis, as well as, utilizing fee-based management accounts.
Although, the content is industry specific and may not make sense to outsiders my question relates to basic sentence structure. AS WELL AS...... how many commas does this require? Thank you very much
SOURCE OF QUESTION & DATE OF RESPONSE
Huntington, New York Fri, Jul 23, 1999
GRAMMAR'S RESPONSE
As I understand it, you want to say you're doing one major thing: "manage." Everything else is a modifying phrase:
Manage approximately 200 accounts, making investment recommendations, employing fundamental and technical research analysis, and using [instead of "utilizing"] fee-based management principles.
Since I know absolutely nothing about this kind of work, however, there might be another kind of relationship between the management of the 200 accounts and the "fee-based management" work. If so, I think you should not try to cram it all into one sentence.

QUESTION
When using "non-fiction" as part of a title, how would one capitalize it? Is it "Non-Fiction" or "Non-fiction"?
SOURCE OF QUESTION & DATE OF RESPONSE
Amarillo, Texas Sun, Jul 25, 1999
GRAMMAR'S RESPONSE
There is probably more than one school of thought on this question, but the Chicago Manual of Style says "Non-Fiction."

Authority: Chicago Manual of Style 14th ed. U of Chicago P: Chicago. 1993. p. 537.


QUESTION
Is "and also" redundant?
Example: She read a book and also cleaned the house.
Thank you.
SOURCE OF QUESTION & DATE OF RESPONSE
White Hall, Arizona Sun, Jul 25, 1999
GRAMMAR'S RESPONSE
Not really. "Also" is normally an adverb meaning "in addition," and you wouldn't think that "in addition" is redundant in that sentence. The word "also" sometimes slips into a conjunctival function, and then it is often redundant when combined with "and." (This is especially true at the start of a sentence where "And also" is a clumsy beginning, indeed.) Having said this, however, you can often simply delete this adverb when it is used together with "and," and your sentence will not miss it in the least.

QUESTION
Mary was not approved as the professor's assistant by the faculty. Questions:
  1. Does the sentence above make sense?
  2. If it is odd, please tell me what is wrong.
SOURCE OF QUESTION & DATE OF RESPONSE
Urayasu, Chiba, Japan Sun, Jul 25, 1999
GRAMMAR'S RESPONSE
It makes sense; we can figure out what it means. However, it could be improved upon simply by changing the passive mode to an active mode:
The faculty did not approve Mary as the professor's assistant.
(And it could be improved beyond that if we made clear that it was Mary's application for the position [not Mary herself] that was not approved: The faculty did not approve Mary's application to become the professor's assistant. or The faculty denied Mary's application . . . . )

QUESTION
I feel as though there is something wrong with the form and correctness of the following sentences.
  • "Click a categories checkbox to include those kinds of questions or not when you play the game."
  • "Click READ ALOUD to have the questions and answers read aloud or not."
In any event, it feels awkward when I read them. Am I correct in my evaluation. I have several of these in a project of mine. They were done elsewhere and I would like to make them less awkward and more gramatically correct.
SOURCE OF QUESTION & DATE OF RESPONSE
Portland, Oregon Sun, Jul 25, 1999
GRAMMAR'S RESPONSE
Implicit in "click a categories checkbox to include those kinds of questions" is the notion that if you don't click a checkbox the questions will not be included. If I don't click "read aloud," the questions and answers will not be read aloud. What I'm suggesting is that the "or not" can be happily omitted. In fact, "or not" has to be omitted or the statements are illogical.

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