The Grammar Logs
#601

A teacher corrected a student of mine stating that he should put a question mark at the end of this: "I wonder if I will pass my test". I think it is a statement, not a question. He was not asking "Will I pass my test?" He is stating that he is presently wondering. How would this student punctuate: "I wonder if I will pass my test"? Why?

You're right: that's a statement, sometimes called an indirect question, and it should end with a period, not a question mark. In a variation of the "wonder" sentence, you can create a real question, as in "I wonder, will Cheney run for Vice President again?" Or "I wonder: will Cheney run again?" But when "wonder" is followed by "if" or "whether," chances are you've got an indirect question, which ends with a period.

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.

Which is correct:

• "Either John or myself are available for any questions you may have."
or

• "Either John or myself is available for any questions you may have."

Thank you.

You didn't give me a "none-of-the-above" choice! When subjects are connected with "either-or" or "neither-nor," the subject closer to the verb determines the verb. Since we really don't have a good reason to use the reflexive form of the first-person pronoun ("myself") here, we're stuck with "Either John or I am available for any questions you may have" — which sounds horrible to most people. This is why we end up with "If you have any questions, please contact either John or me."

Noun phrase — "the man whom you are required to marry"
The infinitive to marry

• Would to marry be the direct object of required?
• Would to marry be an adverb modifying are required?

"To marry" is the direct object of the verb. This is typical of the kind of verb we call "catenative," as in "He decided TO BECOME a vegetarian"; "They like TO PLAY video games"; "He continued TO HARRASS his neighbors." Notice that catenatives are generally mental processes or resolutions of some kind. Not all catenative verbs are followed by infinitives as direct objects, but that's a story for another time.

Authority: Understanding English Grammar by Martha Kolln. 4rth Edition. MacMillan Publishing Company: New York. 1994. p. 113.

This is a sentence from Senator John McCain's letter to Sinclair Broadcasting regarding the April 30, 2004 edition of "Nightline."

"Your decision to deny your viewers an opportunity to be reminded of war's terrible costs, in all their heartbreaking detail, is a gross disservice to the public, and to the men and women of the United States Armed Forces."

Shouldn't "in all their heartbreaking detail" be changed to "in all its heartbreaking detail"? The pronoun (their) and antecedent (war) aren't in agreement. Also, shouldn't "detail" be changed to "details"?

With all due respect to the senator, the problem with the sentence, as you've pointed out (sort of), is that it's hard to visualize "war's terrible costs" as a plural entity, so "their heartbreaking detail" is kind of hard to follow. If we had started with the singularity of "the terrible cost of war," we could have followed that nicely with "in all its heartbreaking detail." "In detail" is a common idiom using the singular to suggest the plural "particulars." I have no idea how the singular came to be used in that idiom.

A reader from Santa Cruz, California, points out that "the answer is simply (in my humble opinion) that the questioner was incorrect. 'Costs' is clearly plural, and that is the noun we're referring back to, so the choice should be 'their.' end of story. To my ear, [McCain's] version sounds just fine."

This sentence is excerpted from an article in the May 2, 2004 edition of The New York Times.

"We all wear the same clothes, eat at the same restaurants and drive the same S.U.V.'s."

If I correctly understand the information you have on plurals and apostrophes, I believe the use of the "apostrophe +s" in S.U.V. is incorrect.

Shouldn't it read "S.U.V.s"? We certainly wouldn't write "drive the same car's or vehicle's," so the apostrope +s in S.U.V. seems incorrect.

The sentence you quote is certainly in line with the style manual published by the New York Times. The Times insists that abbreviations (as opposed to acronyms, which can be pronounced as single words, like NASCAR or NASDAQ) retain the periods and that the plural be formed with an apostrophe + s. The reason for this, according to the style manual, is that in headlines, everthing is capitalized (at least in the Times' way of doing things) and that would make the pluralized abbreviations hard to decipher without the apostrophe +s. True enough. And the Times insists that this same style be carried over into every other use of pluralized acronyms.

In most other situations, though (i.e., when you're not writing for the New York Times), simplification seems to carry the day. Most writers are eliminating the periods from such acronyms and abbreviations and forming the plurals simply by adding a pluralizing "s." Most non-Times writers nowadays would write "we drive the same SUVs." (A quick check on the Web discovers this to be the case at Atlantic, Mother Jones, Salon, the LA Times, the Hartford Courant and the Washington Post.) Exceptions would be abbreviations written in lower case, like "c.o.d.'s" and "p.j.'s".

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

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

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.

Can "go" be considered a helping verb? Ex. I go fishing every Saturday. I know in a sentence such as "I like fishing" that "fishing" is a gerund used as a direct object. However, it doesn't seem to me that "go" can take a direct object.

"Go" is sometimes used as what we call a "resulting copula," meaning that the subject is linked to a defining complement, as in "The milk will go sour in a day." But in this sentence, it's a catenative verb. It means that the verb is accompanied by yet another verb as object. Other examples would be "I avoid fishing," "I hate fishing," "I quit fishing," etc.

"Edward VIII succeeded George V as king on 20 Jan. Within a year and without being crowned, he abdicated rather than give up the woman he loved, Mrs Wallis Simpson,"

Q: Why not "gave up" (past tense)?

The phrase "rather than" actually acts as a preposition in that sentence. (It works the same way as "as much as," "as well as," and "more than" in this respect.) Following the phrase, "give up" is actually a bare infinitive "rather than [to] give up," which forms the object of a prepositional phrase.

I understand the basic rules about whoever and whomever, as in:

• "I will choose whoever is best qualified."
• "I will choose whomever you prefer."

However, would you use "whoever" or "whomever" in the nominative position in this somewhat awkward sentence:

"Who are you painting?"
"It's (whoever, whomever) you prefer."

In your second sentence, "I will choose whomever you prefer," we choose "whomever" because you need the object form for the clause "'you prefer [object = whomever]"; that clause then becomes the object of the main sentence, "I will chose [object = "whomever you prefer"]." We need to follow the same logic in this new sentence. "you prefer [an object, someone]," so we want an object form, "whomever" in that clause. That clause "whomever you prefer" is then the predicate nominative of the main sentence, "It is … ," but the status of the clause as predicate nominative doesn't change the object form of the pronoun within that clause.

What is the rule for using 'best' vs. 'the best'? Example:

I like all games, but tennis and basketball are the games I like best.

Would it be correct to use 'the best' in the example above. If not, why?

Yes, "the best" would be acceptable there. It's similar to "Of the six children, Micki is oldest" or "Of the six chldren, Micki is the oldest." In this example, it's as if you're leaving out "one," "Micki is the oldest [one]." We often construct comparative and superlative statements like this: "I am the taller [of the two]."

What is the correct pronoun to use in the following sentence and the reason please:

Would it be possible for you and I to go to the picnic?

I believe the correct way to structure this sentence is Would it be possible for you and me to go to the picnic.

You're right: you need the object form of the pronoun, "me," to serve as the object of the preposition "for." If "you" weren't in that sentence, the question would probably not have come up: "Would it be possible for me to go to the picnic?" When "you" sneaks into the sentence, we don't change the form of "me."

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