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The Grammar Logs # 459 |
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| QUESTION |
Which is correct?
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| SOURCE OF QUESTION & DATE OF RESPONSE |
Hermosa Beach, California  Mon, Oct 22, 2001
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| GRAMMAR'S RESPONSE |
| More often than not, it is wise to omit the intensifier "really." It seldom truly intensifies anything (but, then, neither does "truly"). The word quick is often used as an adverb—as in "Get rich quick!"—and has been used that way for centuries. But nowadays we are more apt to use quickly as the adverb form. I prefer your final version of that sentence. Authority: The New Fowler's Modern English Usage edited by R.W. Burchfield. Clarendon Press: Oxford, England. 1996. Used with the permission of Oxford University Press. |
| QUESTION |
| She arrived at 4:00 sharp. Is "sharp" an adverb or an adjective? |
| SOURCE OF QUESTION & DATE OF RESPONSE |
| Cypress, Texas Tue, Oct 23, 2001
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| GRAMMAR'S RESPONSE |
| The word sharp is acting as an adverb there, modifying the prepositional phrase "at 4:00" (which is, itself, acting as an adverb, tell us when she arrived). |
| QUESTION |
| What is the plural of "hole in one"? |
| SOURCE OF QUESTION & DATE OF RESPONSE |
| Carmel, Indiana Tue, Oct 23, 2001
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| GRAMMAR'S RESPONSE |
The Chicago Manual of Style says that hyphenated compounds should pluralize the element that is subject to
the change in number. ![[E-Mail Icon]](../gif/email.gif){kind=small} I gather from that that "holes in one" would be appropriate. I did a search of the online
Golf Journal
and couldn't find any instance of the plural of the phrase, unfortunately. (What kind of person worries about the plural of such a singular event, anyway?) I'll leave an e-mail icon here in case some avid grammarian-golfer has better information.
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| QUESTION |
| A question on subject-verb matching: "There ARE one or two HORSES here" is grammatically correct. But given the rule "when nor or or is used the subject closer to the verb determines the number of the verb," and a logical need to reverse the order (perhaps for emphasis or clarity), does that mean that "There IS two or one HORSE here" is also correct? |
| SOURCE OF QUESTION & DATE OF RESPONSE |
| Mesa, Arizona Tue, Oct 23, 2001
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| GRAMMAR'S RESPONSE |
| Your sentence suggests another good reason for avoiding expletive constructions and writing "One or two horses are here," instead. Generally, you're right: when subjects are connected with "or," the subject closer to the verb determines the number of the verb, as in "Is your father or your brothers responsible for this?" It nonetheless sounds odd, and one can usually avoid the problem by putting the plural subject closer to the verb, "Are your brothers or your father responsible for this." We probably can't reverse the order, though, when we write "one or two _____" (although I'm not sure why). I suspect that in an expletive construction like this, the entire phrase is regarded as the subject and the notional plurality of "one or two horses" dictates a plural verb. |
| QUESTION |
| In the following sentence: "This pie is deceptively good.", is the pie actually good though at first glance it does not seem to be so, or is the pie not good but only appears to be so? |
| SOURCE OF QUESTION & DATE OF RESPONSE |
| Fairfield, Connecticut Tue, Oct 23, 2001
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| GRAMMAR'S RESPONSE |
| It is sometimes said of an outfielder in baseball or a pass receiver in football that he is "deceptively fast." I always took this to mean that the athlete is lanky and long-legged and takes long, loping, easy strides, and barely looks like he's trying — but he covers a great deal of ground very quickly and thus is "deceptively fast." If the analogy holds, I suspect the pie is actually quite good, but didn't appear to be so at first. There are surely better, less ambiguous ways to describe a pie. |
| QUESTION |
What part of speech is times in this sentence? I have tried it eight times. |
| SOURCE OF QUESTION & DATE OF RESPONSE |
| Salemburg, North Carolina Wed, Oct 24, 2001
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| GRAMMAR'S RESPONSE |
| It's a noun, meaning roughly the same as "instances." I think that the construction itself is probably a kind of prepositional phrase with an omitted preposition, something like " |
| QUESTION |
Which of these is correct:
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| SOURCE OF QUESTION & DATE OF RESPONSE |
| Houston, Texas Wed, Oct 24, 2001
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| GRAMMAR'S RESPONSE |
| If there is a mix of possessive forms—as, in this case, a common noun (wife's) and a personal pronoun possessive ("my")—it's always better to put the personal pronoun after the other one. So your second version would be an improvement. Your instincts about using "our" are right, though. If we can somehow refer to "me and my wife" in a prior construction so that we know what "our" refers to, we'd be much better off with that possessive form: "My wife and I took a taxi to work this morning; there is a problem with our car." The combination of possessive forms will almost always sound a bit clumsy. |
| QUESTION |
| Can either preface more than two subjects: The Yankees will have to bench either Paul O'Neill, David Justice or Chuck Knoblauch. Or can either only apply to two subjects. The Yankees will have to bench either O'Neill or Justice. |
| SOURCE OF QUESTION & DATE OF RESPONSE |
| Bristol, Connecticut Thu, Oct 25, 2001
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| GRAMMAR'S RESPONSE |
| Some writers will avoid constructions such as your first one in the belief that either must refer to a choice between two things. It is true, however, that if I choose David Justice, I can't choose one of the others, so the logic of either still holds. It is acceptable. Burchfield worries about this and says that "if the number of coordinators is extended to more than two, opinions vary widely about the elegance or even the acceptability of the results." He notes, too, that the negative form is commonly followed by more than two alternatives: "Neither ABC nor CBS nor NBC has a permanent team. . . ." Authority: A University Grammar of English by Randolph Quirk and Sidney Greenbaum. Longman Group: Essex, England. 1993. Used with permission. p. 258. Authority: The New Fowler's Modern English Usage edited by R.W. Burchfield. Clarendon Press: Oxford, England. 1996. Used with the permission of Oxford University Press. (under "either") |
| QUESTION |
| I am conducting research for a paper I am writing for a linguistics course at Indiana University, and I'm not having much luck. I have to research the history of the grammar rule that it is improper to end a sentence with a preposition. I've noted your section on this topic, but I wonder if you know of any good resources for the history of this rule: when, why, and where it was adopted and how it may have changed over time. Any help you can give would be greatly appreciated. |
| SOURCE OF QUESTION & DATE OF RESPONSE |
| Indianapolis, Indiana Thu, Oct 25, 2001
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| GRAMMAR'S RESPONSE |
| If you go to your favorite search engine (Yahoo!'s a good one) and do a search for Bishop Lowth (author of A Short Introduction to English Grammar in 1762), you'll probably find some good material on this rule. (You'd probably do much better, though, going to your local library.) Much of the error in the ways of prescriptivist grammarians in English is laid at the feet of Lowth, who has a bad reputation for basing his rules on English usage on inappropriate Latin models. |
| QUESTION |
| Question #1: Is it ever correct to use "between" when
referring to more than 2 items? Question #2: Can a "twist" be "emboldened"? Both questons relate to this sentence from my hometown newspaper: "It was a bizarre twist in an increasingly tense political tussle between Ms. Marshall, Sheriff Jim Thomas, and her longtime political foes, emboldened by a bitter dispute over the Pledge of Allegiance."Thank you! |
| SOURCE OF QUESTION & DATE OF RESPONSE |
| Santa Barbara, California Thu, Oct 25, 2001
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| GRAMMAR'S RESPONSE |
| It is very difficult to say who or what was "emboldened" in that episode—or how, indeed, one is emboldened by a "bitter dispute" in the first place. (Doesn't one need a victory of some kind to be emboldened?) I'm sure that the writer meant "emboldened" to refer to one or more of the characters involved, not the "twist," but the sentence is, at best, ambiguous. As for the use of between, the writer would have been well advised to use among instead. However, between is often used to describe a close relationship among more than two things or people, where among describes a looser relationship. This is especially true when the choices can occur among pairs within the grouping (thus, the argument occurs between Ms. Marshall and the sheriff and then between the sheriff and the political foes and then between the foes and Ms. Marshall, etc.), so between could actually be acceptable in that sentence. Authority: The Gregg Reference Manual by William A. Sabin. 9th Edition. McGraw-Hill: New York. 2001. Used with the consent of Glencoe/McGraw-Hill. p. 285. Authority: New York Public Library Writer's Guide to Style and Usage HarperCollins: New York. 1994. Cited with permission. p. 32. |
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