The Grammar Logs
#546

I wrote : A registration fee is required to confirm the spot will be held, and to borrow or buy the manual. I was told I should write : A registration fee is required to confirm that the spot will be held...

What is correct ?

If you omit the "that" in this situation, you could create what is called a "miscue." A reader, even a careful reader, might (however temporarily) wonder what it means to "confirm a spot." The "that" eliminates that fleeting possibility. We have a section on Omitting "That", which is based on Theodore Bernstein's Dos, Don'ts & Maybes of English Usage.

When two nouns combine to form a noun, when will we use 's and when will we not?

e.g. : women nightclubs or women's nightclubs??

In this sentence, we hasten to avoid the suggestion that the nightclubs can be women, so add the apostrophe +s to sugggest, instead, that the nightclubs, in a sense, belong to the women. (The women might not literally own the nightclubs, but the nightclubs are there for women.)

• The police officer was affecting an arrest.
or

• The police officer was effecting an arrest.

Which one, and why? I believe the first is correct. Is "affecting" a transitive verb?

I would rather say that the officer was making an arrest, myself. If you really want to use one or the other of the verbs you've given us, though, "effecting" would be correct. "Effect" is, indeed, a transitive verb when it's used to mean "to accomplish" or "to put into operation." A common phrase, for example, is "to effect a change." Generally, though, your instincts are right about these words, and "affect" is the verb that takes an object (How did that movie affect you?) and "effect" is the noun.

Is great grandfather typed with a hyphen? ex. great-grandfather?

According to the New York Times, yes, all your relatives with "great-" deserve a hyphen, including "great-great-grandmother."

Authority: The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage. by Allan M. Siegal and William G. Connolly. Times books: New York. 1999.

What form of address would you use in a letter to Pope John Paul II? What should the salutation of this letter be?

His Holiness Pope John Paul II
Vatican City
00187 Rome
ITALY

and the salutation would be to "Your Holiness:" or "Most Holy Father:."

Authority: The Gregg Reference Manual by William A. Sabin. 9th Edition. McGraw-Hill: New York. 2001. Used with the consent of Glencoe/McGraw-Hill.

Is it correct to write 'You have spelt it wrong' or should we use wrongly? The adverb wrongly seems correct to me, but I am sure that somewhere I have seen a rule covering this point, and allowing the use of wrong.

Both wrong and wrongly are adverbs. As a general rule, use wrongly when the adverb appears before the verb it modifies, but use wrong when the adverb appears after the verb it modifies. "The German shepherd was wrongly awarded Best of Show." "He guessed wrong."

Hello I have a question about the use of adverbs, especially about the word : cheap. Does this word get a -ly as an adverb or does it stay the same? Some people use cheaply some use only cheap. Could you explain which one is correct? And why?

Thank you.

According to Burchfield, cheap can be used to mean "at a low price" and regularly follows the word it qualifies, whereas cheaply has that sense and can also be used to mean "in low esteem." Thus, "You can buy them cheap at Home Depot" and "The college president was treated cheaply by the Board of Trustees." Burchfield also notes that the idiom "I felt cheap" (meaning "demeaned") doesn't work with "cheaply."

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.

I am editing a paper getting a bit confused by sentences such as

Josten's study found that mothers who provided inadequate parenting to their child during the first year of life dealt differently with the tasks of pregnancy than did mothers who provided good or excellent parenting during their child's first year of life.

Should it be child's or children's? Thank you

If possible, I would change the "mothers" to "a mother":

Josten's study found that a mother who provided inadequate parenting to her child …

If that violates the sense of what Josten's study tells us, then you're stuck with the plural "mothers." I don't think you can change the singular "child" to plural "children," because that really does mess with the sense of mothers parenting the individual child.

Could you tell me if the following sentence is gramatically correct - specifically, if the phrase 'to within' is a double prepostion or not...

' The system ledgers must be kept current to within one week of the noted activities, in order to comply with NRC Guidelines"

Thank you very much for your help!

We object to double prepositions when a single preposition will do the job:

Jump off of the table and out of the window. The schack in back of [use "behind"] the barn.

If there is a single preposition substitute for "to within," I don't know what it is. "My watch is accurate to within three seconds a month." I think it's a perfectly acceptable idiom in this sentence — and in yours. I think you ought to consider moving that final phrase, "in order to comply with NRC guidelines," to the beginning of your sentence.

When capitalizing a title, would "than" be capitalized? We seem to disagree on this point. Thank you!

I went to the ultimate authority on this — The Three Stooges film Higher Than/than a Kite (1943) — and found, to my dismay, that than is used both ways, depending on which Web site you look at. The general rule is that we don't capitalize prepositions and conjunctions with four or fewer letters, which would decribe "than," certainly. Within this rule, however, there is a certain leeway for aesthetic considerations, and I'm afraid you're in that leeway. You and the three stooges are on your own.

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