The Grammar Logs
#578

Is this correct? " I am curious as to where you study?"

A great deal has been written about the compound preposition, "as to." The Merriam-Webster usage manual contends that the phrase has strong historical precedent and that nothing more economical can be substituted. Garner, however, argues that the phrase is syntactically weak and that other prepositions — such as "about" (which would probably improve your sentence), "for," etc. — are stronger connectives. I agree with Garner, who comes down especially hard on the phrase "as to whether," which is always clumsy.

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.

By permission, From Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage © 1994 by Merriam-Webster, Inc. (www.Merriam-Webster.com).

When referring to a question within a sentence, such as:

"When using the question 'Why', it is important … "

should one use a question mark (in my example: "when using the question 'why?' it is important...") or not?

When a single-word question is embedded within a sentence like this, we can usually italicize it and skip the question mark:

When using the question why, it is important …

A somewhat larger question embedded within a declarative sentence will call for a question mark at the end of that sentence:

We can decide this later on, can't we, after the football game?

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. 10.

I enjoy your Web site very much. I was hoping you could answer a question for me regarding the phrase "in addition to." I have often seen it used in this construction:

In addition to teaching, I enjoy writing.

Recently, someone suggested that the more correct construction would be:

I enjoy writing in addition to teaching.

I have two questions: 1. is the latter construction more correct? and 2. does "in addition to teaching" function as an adjective or adverbial phrase?

I suppose your friend has a point. It's usually a good idea to put a modifying phrase as close as possible to the thing it modifies, and "in addition to teaching" modifies "writing," not "I." (But I must add that I don't think anyone would ever misunderstand the first version of your sentence.) The phrase is adjectival, at least in this construction, meaning that the one thing is "combined with" or "associated with" the other.

My hometown is/was Dallas Texas.

As long as both you and Dallas exist, you can use the present tense there. Dallas still is your hometown, no matter where you live now. "Hometown" is a protean word, though. Some people use it to mean their place of birth, some use it to mean where they grew up, and some use it to mean their principal place of residence. I suppose that means that it's possible to speak in the past tense about the place you consider to be your hometown: Dallas was my hometown, but now it's Fort Worth. But if you said or wrote such a thing, you'd want your frame of reference to be clear.

In prior times, one would put "cc:" at the bottom of a letter to identify those individuals that were receiving carbon copies. In letters that are now printed electronically, where there is no 'carbon' in the copy, I believe that "c:" is now correct. Can you comment?

Although "carbon paper" has gone the way of the stegosaurus (thank God!), people still use "cc" to indicate that copies have been sent to other people. "Cc" has been called "courtesy copies" nowadays, which will explain the double-c, but other people like to use just "c," instead or to write "Copies to:" to avoid the problem altogether. I don't think anyone even thinks about what the "cc" means, to tell you the truth. (As the Gregg Reference Manual point out, it's sort of like the "dial tone" one hears on phones that no longer have a dial.)

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

If someone rides a mule to go to a certain place, would it be correct to say that "he went by mule"? It is the preposition that I am uncertain of. I learnt that we go by car, we go by train, we go on foot and we go on horseback. But I do not remember ever having been told about going by mule or going on muleback. I could not find the answer in dictionaries, usage guides, or on the internet, and I need to know for a paper I am writing in English.

The common idiom seems to be "went by mule." I don't know why we switch from "on horseback" to "by mule," but we do. I find more than twenty "by mule" references in Google.com, which doesn't prove much of anything — except that it might suggest a low correlation between Internet users and those who go by mule.

Is it appropriate grammar to say "I went and saw a movie last night"?

Appropriate to what? It would be appropriate if you were trying to reproduce extremely casual, even careless, language, but otherwise you would probably want something like "I went to the movies last night" and eliminate that "went and saw" idiom.

Is it proper to say dissatisfied or unsatisfied in the following sentence:

I am dissatisfied with the current program.

Thanks.

Most of my usage manuals try to make the case for a difference between these two words, some with limited success. Garner's distinction makes the most sense: "To be unsatisfied is to be less than completely satisfied, whereas to be dissatisfied is to be positively bothered by the lack of satisfaction." So I think you have to weigh your level of discontentment and decide how much of it you want to convey in your sentence.

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.

I am being homeschooled and I am supposed to find out if you are able to start a sentence with "So"

e.g. So, less time is spent with the family and more time is spent with video games.

This sentence follows another sentence that makes the use of the word "so" useable, but I am not sure if I am to make it one sentence or two.

You certainly could combine the two sentences — assuming logic and length allow — but then you would put the comma before the conjunction, not after. There is nothing wrong with beginning a sentence with So; it works the same way as "additionally" or "therefore," etc., and it can serve as a quick and assertive reminder of one's purpose and transition.

Which is correct?

Twenty-two specialists, many of whom are seasoned veterans, provide technical support to customers.

MS Word suggested "many of who." We worked around it by saying, "many who are seasoned" but I would like to know the correct usage. It seems to me it is in the objective case.

Thanks

Your instincts are right on this. The subject of the verb "are" is "many." "Of whom" is a prepositional phrase modifying the pronoun "many," and we need "whom" as the object of the preposition so it takes the object form (as you said in far fewer words). I tell my students to regard their MS Word grammarchecker as a kindly uncle who means well but doesn't always know what he's talking about.

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