The Grammar Logs
#500

I heard the sentence, "What we need are ships." Is 'are' the correct verb, or should it be 'is'?

Also, is this an example of inversion (which you cover on your Website)?

That's not an example of inversion. You have normal subject-verb order here, but the subject is an entire noun clause, "What we need." That clause is actually singular, so you want a singular verb, "is," even though the predicate is plural.

I have reconsidered this response. An initial "what clause" can use either a singular or plural verb, depending on what it is referring to. Here, the clause is referring to "ships," so we would use a plural verb. In "What we need is a new plan," it would be referring to the singular "plan," so "is" would be appropriate.

My college professor wanted the class to find out what "Nouns Of Address" was and you don't seem to have it. Can you find out what it means and how it is used?

"Nouns of address" is a term used to denote the names and titles of people addressed in text, usually in spoken language, as in "Joe, get over here" or "I don't know what happened that night, Judge." An addressed person's name is set apart from the rest of the sentence by a comma (or pair of commas when appropriate).

I have checked a number of grammar books, but none tell me if the double genitive is an optional form or if it must be employed when the conditions for its use are met. Is it optional or must it be employed in the following sentence (and in all such sentences):

"He explained to me why text X cannot be a work of Gandhi's."

Thank you.

That would be a good example of the need for the double genitive. What is "a work of Ghandi"? We need the "Ghandi's." I think our section on double possessives will help.

Tell me the difference between buffet style restaurants and all-you-can-eat restaurants.

I'm not sure that a distinction is universal or valid in all settings. A buffet simply means that the food is put on a sideboard of the room and people serve themselves. It's casual, sometimes extremely so, but it doesn't necessarily mean you can go back for seconds and thirds. An "all-you-can-eat restaurant," on the other hand, will have a similarly positioned table, and the atmosphere of the place is bound to be extremely casual. It has to be because people — especially men and children — are eating until they explode.

The database crashed in the very first procedure of the report; and because the database was down, we could not create the Automation version.

A co-worker and I are in disagreement about the above sentence. I said that a semi-colon should not be followed by an and. I showed him a page in Strunk and White The Elements of Style. He said this is an evolution of the language and S & W are outdated. He also said that our department tech writer agreed with him. So is the sentence above correct or not?

The Elements of Style might be a bit stuffy, but it's still a redoubtable authority on such matters. A comma would suffice nicely there, and I don't see any reason for using a semicolon. Is that how tech writers like to use the word "procedure," as in "the first procedure of the report"?

Why is someone who is the employed known as an employEE of an employER, when someone who is GIVING a reference is known as the referEE. For consistency, shouldn't the giver of the reference be a referER and the subject of the reference the referEE?

This is really confusing me, please help.

My Merriam-Webster's says that when a referee isn't busy officiating at football and basketball games, he is the person to whom something (usually a legal matter) is referred—which is what you say seems proper and sensible. Perhaps things are different in the UK, however. I don't find any uses for the word "referer," perhaps because it's almost impossible to say that word without sounding like a car with a battery gone dead.

Sorry to bother you again. Could you give me a grammatical justification of why "grow a program" is wrong and silly?

"SRP, which is aggressively growing its program..."

Does that mean it's not enough to say that this usage gives me the willies? that it creates for me an image of SRP (whatever that is) standing out in a field, obsessedly hoeing and weeding its program?

The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage proclaims that "the newer usage of 'grow' to mean expand (grow the business, grow revenue) is business jargon, best resisted." The stylebook of Princeton University's Spectator concurs.

Can you tell me which is correct? ...these fall somewhere in-between. or ...these fall somewhere in between?

"In between" is an idiom meaning, simply, "between." When we say that something is "in-between" (with the hyphen), that refers to some kind of intermediate state.

Authority: Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Electronic Edition, Version 1.5. 1996. Used with permission.

Assuming the desired outcome is finding the book, is it proper to use "I'll see if I can't find the book" as an announcement of one's pending search?

I maintain that it would be correct to instead say, "I'll see if I can find the book," as it indicates the preferred outcome. I feel that using the negative is confusing, as it seems to indicate that the desired outcome is *not* finding the book. Granted, this usage seems to be prevalent in the northeast USA, but I'm curious if there are any grammar rules actually stating its incorrectness.

I'm not aware of any rules about this kind of thing, and I can't find anything in my reference manuals about it. I think the negative "can't," in this situation, makes the enterprise of finding the book — the probable outcome of the search — a bit more tenuous. But grammatically, it's still quite acceptable. Perhaps the appearance of the negative is similar in intent to the use of the subjunctive in conditional sentences? I'll leave an e-mail icon here in case someone else can explain it better.

What is the difference between the usage of largest vs. biggest. i.e. in the context "these are some of the largest and most successful investment scams" should "largest" be "biggest"?

The dictionary doesn't help us much here; it gives "large" as a definition of "big," and vice versa. The word "big" seems to have all kind of idiomatic baggage attached to it: "a really big man," "the big moment," "a big talker," "capri pants are really big this summer," "he was big about it," etc. It also seems more casual than large, although there are circumstances in which large would be just plain wrong. If you were describing an American football player, for instance, you would describe him as big; large would not be inaccurate, but it would be portentous, implying amplitude and abundance where size is all you're looking for. Because of that casual air about big, I would recommend using large in the context you're suggesting and in most formal, academic contexts.

Previous Grammar Log

Next Grammar Log

Index of Grammar Logs

Guide to Grammar and Writing