The Grammar Logs
#540

Am I correct in putting a hyphen between teenage and robbery? Thank you.

The ballistics of the gun were consistent with those of the murder weapon used on the two teenage-robbery victims.

No. That hyphen makes it appear that there are victims of something known as "teenage-robbery," which is not what you mean. I suspect that you're talking about two robbery victims who happen to be in their teens. So you can write this either as "two teenage robbery victims" or "two teenaged robbery victims."

I found your wonderful grammar site a couple of months ago and use it frequently. I have a question that I hope you can answer. I am a middle school English teacher in Plano, Texas, and the students were recently studying hard to find subjects in sentences. We looked at sentences starting with 'Here' and 'There' and were able to diagram them per your website. But we don't know how to classify the function of 'Here' and 'There' in this kind of sentence. Is it an adverb? Our grammar text doesn't classify it as such; it is merely stated as a "sentence beginner." Can you help?

"Sentence beginner" is an interesting description — and probably as good as anything else. In the diagramming section of our Web site, we see the word on a solid horizontal line hovering over the rest of the sentence. (If you wish, it can be connected with the verb part of the main diagram with a vertical dotted line.) According to Kolln, the unstressed "there" (or "here") serves no grammatical function in the sentence and is called an "expletive." Kolln also refers to this kind of sentence as a "there transformation." Other grammar resources will define the "there" or "here" as an adverb (but it is not shown that way in diagrams).

Authority: Understanding English Grammar by Martha Kolln. 4rth Edition. MacMillan Publishing Company: New York. 1994. p. 133.

In your example sentence "Our biggest worry is that students won't read the signs" you diagram the won't as part of the verb phrase "won't read." Why isn't the verb broken out into will + not+ read with the not appearing as an adverb below the line? I am trying to use diagramming as a way to help some of my advanced high school students understand how sentences are put together. We have not gotten as far as very complex sentences yet, and I have been working through your examples for myself to be sure I understand them, but I am confused about the verb above. Thank you for your response and guidance.

We can explain the contracted "n't" appearing with the verb string as a symptom of laziness or (in my own defense) as an effort to show the entire verb string as it is written. I see nothing wrong, though, with changing the auxiliary to "will not" with the adverbial "not" appearing on a diagonal under the verb. Kolln leaves the contracted verbs as she finds them, and we've modelled our examples on her work.

Authority: Understanding English Grammar by Martha Kolln. 4rth Edition. MacMillan Publishing Company: New York. 1994.

First: a great web site; when I was a kid in school, of course I hated grammar, diagramming and the like; somehow now as a 54 yr. old, the logic, and lack thereof at times, is fun; the deep structure of language exciting. I found the answers to some burning questions, ie Chris's or Chris', but one that just came to me yesterday and I couldn't quite resolve on your great site:

I'd never say, "He got there before I.", (Is that right?, the .", ?) but I could say, "He got there before I got there."

Please set me straight; my real question is the "I," not the punctuation; the site answered that, but I haven't studied it enough to be sure I'm right on that one. Thanks for your time and attention.

You would say "He got there before I got there" because you need the "I" to fulfill the function of subject in the clause "I got there." You'd say "He got there before me," because you need the object form, "me," as the object of the preposition "before." In the first sentence "before I got there" is an adverbial clause telling us when he got there. In the second sentence, "before" introduces a prepositional phrase acting as an adverb.

Do I say "I want to go out really really badly" or "I want to go out really really bad"?

The use and repetition of "really" indicates that this is a pretty casual expression, uttered in casual circumstances. In that case, the "bad" is acceptable. In a more formal situation and sentence, you would want to use "badly": "The Boston Symphony Orchestra needs a new conductor — and needs one badly." The use of "bad" and "badly" in such constructions has become an acceptable American idiom.

When using the sentence 'the ship was vastly powerful' what grammatical feature does the 'vastly' play, and what group does it come under?

The word "vastly" is modifying the adjective "powerful" here (telling us "how powerful"), so it's an adverb. It's also rather imprecise and perhaps even unnecessary. Something like "vastly more powerful than its sister ship, Le France" would make the adverb more meaningful.

Is using "not hardly" as an answer to a yes or no question appropriate, or should it always be simply "hardly."

Along with "can't hardly," the construction "not hardly" (often used as a response to a yes-no question), is, at best, a casualism. It should be used only when you're attempting to reproduce the language of those who should know better.

When constructing a sentence with separate conjoined clauses, when do you put a comma before the word "and"?

For example:
I am excited to be a part of the team and look forward to working with you.

versus:
I am excited to be a part of the team and I look forward to working with you.

Do you need a subject in the second clause in order to corrently place a comma before the "and" or should one put a comma in the middle of both sentences?

The first sentence, above, does not really conjoin clauses; the and in that sentence is only connecting two verbs: "am excited" and "look forward." The conjunction can connect two of anything without a comma except for two clauses, which is what is happening in the second sentence you give us. You have two separate subject-verb relationships ("I am excited" — "I look forward"); thus you have two independent clauses and should use a comma along with your and.

A friend's 19-year-old son questions the appropriateness of using the phrase, "as it were," claiming the phrase is not grammatically correct. How would you respond to this claim? Thank you.

If you're using this phrase all the time, I suppose it must become rather annoying, as most sentences can get along fine without it. But it is a phrase of long standing — meaning "as it were so" or "if one might so put it" or something to that effect — and there is nothing grammatically incorrect about it. Garner describes "as it were" as a phrase that finds a home in "highly self-conscious writing."

From The Oxford Dictionary of American Usage and Styleby Bryan Garner. Copyright 1995 by Bryan A. Garner. Published by Oxford University Press, Inc., www.oup-usa.org, and used with the gracious consent of Oxford University Press.

On CNN a few nights ago, a message about a policy related to North and South Korea was printed on the screen. I couldn't decide if I agreed with the punctuation, so I thought I would ask your opinion. The message read, "South Korea supports the measure; North Korea does not." At first glance I assumed that the semicolon was correctly used because the two sentences are not joined by a conjunction. However, I was wondering if the word "but" is omitted but is understood like the understood "you." If that's the case, could a writer correctly use a comma between the sentences?

The sentence is correct as it stands; I wouldn't mess with it. Some writers, however, would use a comma there instead of a semicolon, arguing that when the two independent clauses (connected without a conjunction, understood or otherwise) are relatively brief and very nicely balanced (which is true of this sentence), a comma will suffice. I'd stick with the semicolon, myself.

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