The Grammar Logs
#547

I recently received in an e-mail from one of my French friends the following question. "In our conversation you wrote, " I have never gotten a response."

He asks can we write "gotten," as opposed to got, or did I make a mistake. I know that what I wrote was correct, but no grammar books have an explanation as to why it's so.

The French gives me the fantods — bad memories of second-year French in college — but my resources say that "have gotten" is much preferred in the U.S., "have got" much preferred in England.

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.

We are having a debate in our office about the use of "body" vs "bodily" fluid. OSHA regulations use "body fluids" — but many disagree and believe it should be "bodily" fluid. Please help. One of the sentences in our memo:

This process is not be considered sufficient for a treatment of the blood and body fluids.

Should it be "bodily"? (We are a county hazmat office, so no worries about our question!

I was surprised that I couldn't find a single entry in any of my usage manuals on these words. So I went to Google.com and paired both "body fluids" and "bodily fluids" with the names of prestigious medical schools. Responses seem to indicate that "body fluids" is used much more frequently than "bodily fluids," especially in the context that you're addressing. "Bodily fluids" is not unused, but it's a relatively faint minority.

I was wondering about the correct punctuation for a sentence beginning with the word "guess". Is this a question or a command?

Ex. Guess what's in my bag?
Guess how much money I made last night?

Should sentences like these end with a question mark or a period, and why? Thank you!

Sentences that begin with "guess" are a lot like sentences that begin with "I wonder … ." They sort of look and feel like questions, but they're really just statements, declarations of something or even directives to do something. Thus we end them with a period. A sentence like "Can you guess what I'm doing?" is, however, a horse of different stripes.

Which sentence fragment is grammatically correct?

• "As one of only a few investment firms that PROVIDE both debt and equity..."
OR

• "As one of only a few investment firms that PROVIDES both debt and equity...."

And why is it correct? Thank you!

The relative pronoun "that" (the subject of the clause in question) is referring to "a few investment firms," which is plural. Thus, we want the plural verb "provide." [The relative pronoun is not referring back to "one."]

How do I punctuate the following sentence please?

If it is asked, "What is this?" the answer is joy.

(I'm not sure what to do with punctuating the question within quotation marks within a greater sentence, and I don't know whether the answer, (ie the word 'joy') should be in quotes or not.

It is acceptable to have a question come to an end, with a question mark, mid-sentence. The question is how to pick up from that point on. Most writing manuals do not recommend or even accept putting another punctuation mark, a comma, immeidately after the question mark. Some writers would use a dash here, and to good effect:

If it is asked, What is this? — the answer is joy

I regard the quotation marks as optional, myself (I think you can get along just fine without them), and you might want to consider the possibility that your reader may wonder what "it" refers to — a crystal ball? a magic cube of some kind?

My Word 2002 spell checker says that the plural for the word "gunship" is "gun ships." Is there some rule about pluralizing "compound words" (pardon my ignorance), whereby the word splits into its parts to pluralize it?

Thank you …

If you do a search for the "gunships" form of the plural on Google.com, you'll find over 50,000 entries. Ignore the word processor on this one. (No one would know what "gun ships" refers to.)

That versus Which...

Each customer is unique, with different needs, desires and perceptions. So a single message or offer is not universally relevant.

That/Which is why more companies are looking to tailor communications to individuals.

The problem is that we're leaving that "so" clause hanging out there in the middle. What if we started with that clause: "A single message or offer can never be universally relevant, because each customer is unique, with different needs, desires, and perceptions — which is why more companies seek to tailor their communications to individuals."

You might want to ask if anything, really, is "universally relevant."

I am trying to figure out how "insofar" is used when writing.

You'd be much better off not trying. In the U.S., we write "insofar" as one word; in England, it's written as three separate words. But regardless of how it's spelled, the sentence it's in would almost invariably be better off with "since" or "because of" or even "as."

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.

What verb is appropriate to use with the following sentence?

Every promise, every petition, every prophetic word is necessary to live for God.

The three things so named at the beginning of the sentence are not compounded (as they would be, say, if connected with "and"); instead, each one, in turn, connects to the verb, which should remain the singular "is." I trust that the sentence would be more meaningful in a context that explains what these three things are.

I have a research paper to write about Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants." When referring to the couple in the story, we were instructed to use 'are' instead of 'is.' For example: "The couple are sitting in the shade." or "The couple are arguing." Is this grammatically correct or is my professor an idiot? Thank you!

Collective nouns, usually, are singular, and this couple seems to be engaged in singular activities in those sentence, so singular verbs are appropriate. But couples (like other collective nouns) can be regarded as plurals, also. You might say, for instance, "The couple are on their honeymoon" (although that seems unlikely in "Hills Like White Elephants") or "The couple argued bitterly; they [not it] even screamed at each other." So you could say the "couple is sitting in the shade," but "the couple are sitting on flimsy little folding chairs." Within a sentence, at least, consistency is nice. The question of your professor's intellectual abilities is outside the realm of our expertise.

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