The Grammar Logs
#527

I've been challenged on placement of the word "conducive" after "environment" and need your expert advice, please.

The word "conducive" is used in conjunction with the preposition "to," so you want the second option, but use "to," instead, as in "an environment conducive to mildew growth." For some reason, we don't say that we have a "conducive environment," but that the environment is conducive to something. (If my rusty Latin serves me right, meaning that the environment leads us to something, like a conductor.)

I was told that the use of "if not" in place of "unless" is totally unacceptable. However, if I ask the thesaurus in "Word" for a synonym of "unless" it gives me "if not." The phase I am referring to is "This message is in no way binding for OTO if not followed by an official document." Although I admit that the word "unless" works a lot better, I did not realize that "if not" may be a grammatical mistake. Could you please confirm this for me?

I have to admit I was completely ignorant of this problem with "if not" until now, but Bryan Garner points out that "if not" can sometimes mean "maybe even" (which is more common, as in "Truman may go down in history as one of the greatest if not the greatest president"), sometimes "though not" (as in "Kwan's short program, adequately if not flawlessly executed . . ." [Garner's examples].) Bernstein notes that "if not" is acceptable in speech because the intonation we use makes it clear what we mean. But apparently it's a phrase that careful writers want to avoid.

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.

Thanks for helping.

Should it be:

1. Yes, sir. OR Yes, Sir.
2. Yes, ma'am OR Yes, Ma'am.

I'm not sure what to call these words — honorifics? — but don't capitalize them in the contexts you list above.

Are there any hard and fast rules for determining when to precede the word "including" with a comma? In the following sentence, it doesn't seem altogether necessary:

"My professional activities have involved a range of jobs including construction worker, waiter, and private music teacher."

In the next sentence, however, it does:

"I have earned several degrees, including a bachelor's in music and a master's in philosophy."

I did a search for ", including" in www.atlantic.com, a source I tend to trust a great deal, and found that there is almost always a comma before a phrase beginning with "including." There are, however, as you point out, a handful of exceptions, including:

• [They have] signed contracts to accept inmates from states including Colorado, Hawaii, Montana, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Virginia.
• Ken Burns has described [his project] as the final part of a trilogy including The Civil War (1990) and Baseball (1994)

The answer to your question, then, is that no, there is no hard and fast rule. There is almost always a comma, but certain situations — in which the list is absolutely indispensable for the sense of the sentence — call for none.

In this sentence, is "felt" a linking or action verb: "I felt like I was breathing water."

I think most writers would substitute "as if" for "like" in that sentence — so we can avoid using that word as a subordinating conjunction. But that isn't what you asked. It's a linking verb. Try adding an adjective to that sentence, and you'll see how it acts as a link: "I felt awful, as if I were breathing water."

I have a question regarding the use of the article before an acronym. I'm describing a SAP script or an SAP script.

I know "an" sounds better, but looking at it, it seems "a" is correct. I've seen previous documents using both a and an. Which is correct?

Do you say "sap" (like the stuff that runs in trees) or "ess-a-pee"? If you spell it out, you need "an SAP" (because of the vowel sound in "ess"). If you say "sap," you need "a SAP." I suppose that's why you see it both ways: people don't know how to say it.

Please explain the reason that it is "feel" and not "feels" in the following example

....with a humble attitude that makes everyone feel congenial.

We use the root form of the verb "feel" in that sentence because it's really not a verb; it's what is called a "bare infinitive" or "zero infinitive" (an infinitive without its usual sidekick, the particle "to"). The verb "makes," in this sentence, is one of the so called causative verbs, which are always followed by another verb in the base form.

Greetings: Is the use of the propositional phrase "for free" proper English? It sounds awful to me.

The "for" is always superfluous and bad form. Free, by itself, or free of charge or for nothing would be good substitutes. As Lovinger points out, "free" is an adverb in that sentence and "for free" makes no more sense than "for expensively" would make.

Authority: The Penguin Dictionary of American English Usage and Style by Paul W. Lovinger. Published by Penguin Reference (New York: 2000).

Can you use "whose" to refer to an inanimate object? For example, is the following sentence OK?

The best performance is that of a cushion whose impact properties are chosen such that the performance index is minimized.

If not, how should it be reworded?

It is perfectly acceptable to use "whose" to refer to objects (despite the claims of a handful of ancient grammarians to the contrary). The only way to avoid it would be a horrible construction such as "a cushion the impact properties of which are. . . ." Many writers, by the way, would object to this use of "such" and would use "so that," instead. But that's not what you asked.

What is the difference between "if" and "even if"? A certain grammarian says that the logical meaning of "even if A, B" is that "(even) if not A, B holds". Therefore, he says, the following sentences are meaningless. These "even if" should be replaced with "if".

1. One pretends not to notice the faults of others, even if one is aware of them.
2. Even if I were to ask him, he would answer vaguely.

In (1), if "one is not aware of the faults of others", one should not be able to pretends not to notice them, he says.

Is he right? Are these usages of "even if" ungrammatical or meaningless? And if these "even if" should be replaced with "if", what is the difference between "if" and "even if"?

I have never come across this objection to the use of "even if" before, and I don't find much about this common phrase in my writing manuals. Burchfield notes that the phrase is used "to invite comparison of the stated assertion, negation, etc., with an implied one that is less strong or remarkable." And he gives the example of "Even if my watch is right, we shall be late," meaning that if his watch is slow, we shall be even later. I believe the lack of logic in the two sentences you give us is simpler than your grammarian friend allows. In your first sentence (as your friend points out), you cannot pretend not to notice the faults of others if you are not aware of them (i.e., you have to know about them before you can pretend not to notice them). And in your second sentence, there is, again, no implied comparison — because he would not answer at all if you did not ask him. The conjunction if, by itself, would make sense in your second sentence, but I don't think anything is going to save the first.

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.

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