The
Grammar
Logs
# 408
QUESTION Can "think" and "thought" be used correctly in both of these sentences?
- I think I saw you last night.
- I thought I saw you last night.
SOURCE OF QUESTION & DATE OF RESPONSE Halifax, Canada Thu, Oct 26, 2000
GRAMMAR'S RESPONSE Because the conjecture implied in "think" is so closely related to the act of seeing (last night), it naturally calls for the past tense "thought." I don't see anything wrong with the present "think," though, if you want to stress the presentness, the nowness" of your thinking so.
QUESTION This is my problem sentence: According to the news, there were an estimated 100 people trapped in the building at the time of the fire.Can you please explain to me how "were an estimated 100 people" works? How is it that "were" and "100 people" are plural, but "an" is singular? Do all of the modifiers modify "people" or do they each modify something different?SOURCE OF QUESTION & DATE OF RESPONSE Tokyo, Japan GRAMMAR'S RESPONSE Is this an example of a participle — "estimated" — behaving like an adverb, modifying the number "100" this case? Or is the entire phrase "an estimated 100" acting as an adjectival phrase? (But we should still be able to break it down into its parts, shouldn't we?) I really don't know, but I'll leave an e-mail icon here in case someone else can offer some help.
QUESTION Is there something wrong with: While sitting on the table, the phone rang.{This dangling participle makes sense.} Please mail me the answer.SOURCE OF QUESTION & DATE OF RESPONSE Guatang, South Africa GRAMMAR'S RESPONSE There's nothing really wrong with it, I suppose, but your reader is surely going to think that the initial participial phrase is modifying a person, so it comes as a shock to see "the phone" being modified. And, finally, does it make sense to say that the phone rings while it is sitting there? The phone might just sit there, and it might ring, but it's hard to think of it doing both at the same time (implied by "while"). Even if you change the order of things so the participial phrase doesn't dangle at the beginning — "The phone rang while sitting there" — it's still kind of hard to follow.
QUESTION I've been reading Norman Lewis' "Word Power Made Easy" and met with this question. Was it (she, her) you were talking about?I thought "her" was correct because you need an object after a preposition. The above sentence is a variation of "Were you talking about her?" But to my dismay, his answer key says "she" is correct. I need some explanation.SOURCE OF QUESTION & DATE OF RESPONSE Unknown GRAMMAR'S RESPONSE I don't blame you. The original sentence, "Were you talking about her?" is, of course, correct: we need "her" as the object of the preposition "about."
QUESTION Which is grammatically correct, legal organization chart or legal organizational chart? SOURCE OF QUESTION & DATE OF RESPONSE Brooklyn, New York GRAMMAR'S RESPONSE "Organization" would suffice, but I think either would be fine. The problem with "organizational" is that it suggests that the chart, in itself, is somehow organizational in nature (i.e., it's trying to organize something). For me, the word "organization" suggests that the function of the chart is to describe the legal organization of a given entity (corporation or whatever). I have a feeling that I'm not making any sense here, except to myself.
QUESTION In the following sentence do the names of the different species of penguins need to be capitalized? Here, on the exposed rock surfaces at the bottom of the world, penguins accumulate in the millions: king, gentoo, rock-hopper and macaroni penguins on the outer islands, chinstraps on the peninsula and, on the rocky outer edges of continental Antarctica itself, the Adelies.SOURCE OF QUESTION & DATE OF RESPONSE Somewhere, Greece GRAMMAR'S RESPONSE Generally, we don't capitalize the names of plants and animals unless those names, themselves, are inherited from some other proper noun -- as in Baltimore oriole. (I'm not sure what "Adelies" comes from, but it sounds like that's the case here. There's a macaroni penguin?
QUESTION I have two questions: Is the word president capitalized only when you are talking about the president of the United States? In this sentence: I said "hello" to the president of the university.President is not capitalized is it.In this sentence would I need a comma after doctor and before Mr. Smith? Say hello to your doctor, Mr. Smith. (Mr Smith is the name of the doctor)
SOURCE OF QUESTION & DATE OF RESPONSE Kentwood, Michigan GRAMMAR'S RESPONSE Yes, you're right about the capitalization of "president." And yes, you need a comma there, to see off Mr. Smith. Whether Mr. Smith is the name of a person being addressed or is the name of the doctor, it's still a parenthetical element. If you put Mr. Smith anywhere else in the sentence, you'll see there are ways of avoiding the ambiguity: Mr. Smith, say hello to your doctor. In the social context in which such a sentence is used, there probably is no ambiguity anyway — but you'd still need the comma in recording it.
QUESTION Is the folowing sentence grammatically correct? If all of the missionaries work for free, the Church does not have to pay others to do the jobs.I was told that it is not correct to use the word "for" in that sentence. I was told that you can only use "for free" if you are giving something away. Could you please explain this whole concept to me. I don't understand why you can't use "for".SOURCE OF QUESTION & DATE OF RESPONSE Provo, Utah GRAMMAR'S RESPONSE If, as my dictionary says, "for free" means "without charge," then I don't see why the phrase, however inelegant, would not be correct. "My dentist pulled my bad tooth, and he did it for free." If you're giving something away, that means the thing is "free," not "for free," although one hears the phrase used that way: "The balloons are 'for free.'" In any case, you're better off saying the missionaries worked without compensation — or at no cost to the church.
QUESTION When should we use the long infinitive to verb+ing? Example: I'm on my way to becoming an expert.SOURCE OF QUESTION & DATE OF RESPONSE Eindhoven, The Netherlands GRAMMAR'S RESPONSE I don't think that's actually an infinitive. I think the "becoming" of that sentence is actually a noun form, a gerund; it is the "thing" that you are on your way towards. We could, for instance, say something like "I'm looking forward to my becoming an expert."
QUESTION My concern is help vs. assist -- I have always thought that you can, for example, help educate but must assist in educating. In other words, assist must use a preposition when used with another verb - I think. An example I've run across: We are devoted to assisting our clients accumulate and safeguard assets.To me, this would be okay as:Is this right, or is the original example okay?
- We are devoted to helping our clients accumulate and safeguard assets.
Or as:- We are devoted to assisting our clients in accumulating and safeguarding assets.
SOURCE OF QUESTION & DATE OF RESPONSE St. Petersburg, Florida GRAMMAR'S RESPONSE I agree with your analysis, but I'm not sure why. I think you might have to look up assist in the Oxford English Dictionary. (With Christmas coming up, I'm leaving hints around the house. . . .) Help is one of the so-called factitive verbs. Most factitive verbs are followed by an infinitive form — "She allowed the bird to perch on her shoulder. We hired someone to rake the leaves." But some of them, like help and let, are used with a base form of the verb: "We let them sleep. We helped them do their homework." Assist, though (I agree with you), works better with a prepositional phrase of some kind: "We assisted them in rounding up the horses." It probably has something to do with the Latin base of the verb itself.
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