The Grammar Logs
#600

Which is correct:

Please contact the registrar's office at your campus, if you have any questions about dropping course(s) or withdrawing from the college.

or

Please contact the registrar's office at your campus if you have any questions regarding dropping course(s) or withdrawing from the college.

The adverbial clause beginning with "if" is essential to the meaning of your sentence, so you definitely do not want to set it off with a comma. Whether "about" is better than "regarding," I leave to your judgment, but can't we just say "courses" and forget about that parenthetical "(s)"?

Which sentence is correct:

• The only party that benefits in such cases is lawyers.
or

• The only party that benefit in such cases are lawyers.

"The only party" is your subject, and that's singular, so you want "is." Can you change "party" to "people" so it would read "The only people that benefit in such cases are lawyers"?

A forecaster wrote:

Light west winds WILL INCREASE TO 10-20 KNOTS AND GUSTY today.

He complained because an editor changed it to:

Light west winds TURNING GUSTY, INCREASING TO 10-20 KNOTS today.

Forecaster claimed the meaning had been changed. I say that the first sentence was gramatically incorrect and awkward; the meaning was not changed. What do you think?

The first sentence is saying that "winds will increase to gusty," which I don't think makes sense. The rewrite is a huge improvement. Or "Light west winds will turn gusty today, increasing to 10 – 20 knots." Or ""Light west winds will increase to 10 to 20 knots today and turn gusty." In any case, we have to split up those two ideas.

Is it correct to say, "Unfortunates such as I were saddled with bad football teams", or, "Unfortunates such as me were saddled with bad football teams"?

In other words, should the form of the adjective phrase agree with the subject or the predicate?

You want "I." There's an understood verb that goes along with the "as" here — something like "Unfortunates such as I [have been} … " I don't think I have ever seen the word "unfortunate" used as a noun-class before. Does it mean something like "Many unlucky players — and I was one of them — were saddled with bad football teams." Or "ended up joining" might be an improvement over "were saddled with."

Recently, our company policy has been to append the following statement to letters and such that we send out to our clients. To my mind, it doesn't sound right:

• "Any information and documentation involving [...] are provided on behalf of [...]"
Should this not be:

• "Any information and documentation involving [...] is provided on behalf of [...]"

The question is, I guess, does the use of the "and" in "information and documentation" mean we have to use are to maintain subject-verb agreement, despite information and documentation being non-countable nouns?

I think the question is this: Do "information " and "documentation" become one thing, like macaroni and cheese, rice and beans, or do they remain discrete elements calling for a plural verb? With the determiner "any" out there, it feels like one pile of information to me: the "information" and "documentation" become a single notion, and I agree with you: I would use the singular "is."

We're debating about the words submission and submittal. Which one is the act of submitting something, and which one is the item submitted? Or may they be used interchangeably?

The dictionary and several style guides have provided no help.

Bryan Garner calls "submittal" a "needless variant" of "submission" — which I take to mean that he thinks "submittal" is technically acceptable but dumb.

From Garner's Modern American Usageby Bryan Garner. Copyright 2003 by Bryan A. Garner. Published by Oxford University Press, Inc., www.oup-usa.org, and used with the gracious consent of Oxford University Press.

Is the following sentence structure correct?

Since becoming a supervisor in April 2001, I have been working for the eastern office.

Specifically, is using "Since becoming" proper grammar?

All those "-ing" forms create a sense of standing around the water cooler, not accomplishing anything in particular. What about something like "I have worked at the eastern office [of ________] since April 2001, when I became [or "was named"] supervisor of that office." And maybe we could change the rather vague "have worked" to something like "I have been responsible for ______ "

The now-everpresent phrase 'prior to' in place of 'before' is of concern to me. Am I right in understanding that 'prior' is an adjective and that 'prior to' is therefore incorrect? Or, is it simply my sense of style getting in the way, insisting that it is better to use one word ('before'), rather than two?

The Merriam-Webster's usage manual doesn't seem to have much trouble with "prior to," saying it's acceptable at just about all levels of usage (noting, however, that it is much more common in formal or legalistic text than it is in casual writing). Garner disparages "prior to" as "commercialese, bureaucratese, and legalese" and says it's "terribly overworked." Theodore Bernstein calls it a faddish affectation and asks, "Would you say "posterior to" instead of "after"?

Authority: The Careful Writer by Theodore Bernstein. The Free Press: New York. 1998.

From Garner's Modern American Usageby Bryan Garner. Copyright 2003 by Bryan A. Garner. Published by Oxford University Press, Inc., www.oup-usa.org, and used with the gracious consent of Oxford University Press.

USA Today online printed the following sentence:

Mark Burnett plus the Donald equal a hit.

Since I have always seen two plus two equals four, shouldn't equal in the above sentence be changed to equals? If not, why?

By any accounting, Trumpian or otherwise, one plus one equalS (a singular verb) a hit. The phrase attached to"plus" modifies the subject, but it does not compound it (the way that "and" does, for instance). So the subject of the sentence remains "Mark Burnett" and the verb should be the singular "equals."

#1 Is this a grammatically correct sentence?

WPSI, the first museum-sponsored art radio station, launched on April 19, turning the art community on its ear.

"turning the art community on its ear" is an adverbial phrase modifying the verb launched, right?

#2 I read this in yesterday's New York Times, Page A 14:

"Rather than a risky military operation, American officials have been hoping to isolate Mr. Sadr among his fellow Shiites."

"Rather than a risky military operation" is an introductory phrase? A dangling participle? What does it modify? It just doesn't sound right.

Please clarify.

Whatever follows "rather than a risky military operation" ought to be an alternative to a risky military operation. The phrase probably should have read, "Rather than RISK a military operation, American officials hope … ."

It is doubtful that the the participial phrase in your first sentence, "turning the art community on its ear," is adverbially modifying the verb "launched." Participles tend to modify nouns, even when they come after the noun they modify. If we reverse the order of things, it's fairly clear the that the phrase is meant to modify the radio station, "Turning the art community on its ear, WPSI … ."

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