I know that using the expression :”I look forward to doing business with you ” is right. How and where can I find information about using “to doing” to students?
Dear LS:
On our web site take at look at www.englishplus.com/grammar/00000335.htm or look up “Gerund” in the Grammar Slammer glossary. “To doing business with you” is a prepositional phrase. The object of the preposition is the gerund phrase “doing business with you.”
I hope this helps.
1-This pizza is to eat tonight.
2-This film is to see as soon as possible.
3-This tie is to wear at fancy places.
Are these sentences grammatical?
Could any of them be used in spoken English?
Dear N:
No. To make them standard English, you must put the infinitive in the passive voice. The infinitive is a subject complement, that is, it renames the subject, and in none of the sentences is the subject doing the action.
1a This pizza is to be eaten tonight.
2a This film is to be seen as soon as possible.
3a This tie is to be worn at fancy places.
It would be very unlikely that anyone would say #2a, but it is grammatically OK.
We note that other languages do use infinitives the way your original sentences are written, but it is confusing in English.
Dear G:
You wrote:
Dunno, but back as a kid in Virginia, we were taught that a sentence such as “The former overweight woman told us how she lost fifty-five pounds” (the example you use for culmulative adjectives) should always be written using an adverb (as in: “The formerly overweight woman told us how she lost fifty-five pounds”) as adverbs modify adjectives. Is that rule gone with the wind or since when do we no longer use “ly” adverbs to modify adjectives?
Both ways are technically correct. The way you propose actually solves a lot of the cumulative adjective problems. In your case, clearly “formerly” is an adverb modifying “overweight.” In our example “former” is a cumulative adjective modifying “overweight woman.” Both are standard English, but we wanted to illustrate the cumulative adjectives in our example–with maybe a touch of humor.
1-Knowing that I haven’t taken any exercice during the day, I’ll have a light meal at night.
1a.Knowing that I haven’t taken any exercice during the day, I have a light meal at night.
2-Whenever I know that I haven’t taken any exercice during the day, I’ll have a light meal at night.
Can 1 and 1a be used instead of 2 (for a habitual action)?
Dear N:
2 is best for habitual action because of the word “whenever.” 1 and 1a are both OK, but they may refer to a single action. There is nothing to indicate single or repeated action. Context is critical for those, but 2 is clearly a repeated action. In any case, the future tense is more commonly used than the present in the main clause, so 1 would be more typical than 1a. However, because 1a is in the simple present, it could be used for a repeated action as well.
Which are correct?
1-“It was our team celebrating at the end.”
or:
2-“At the end, it was our team celebrating.”
instead of:
3-“It was our team that celebrated at the end.”
Dear N:
All three are standard English, and they all mean the same thing.
Which of these are correct:
1-Happy I was in my own house.
2-Not happy I was in my own house.
3-Happy was I in my own house.
4-Not happy was I in my own house.
I don’t think they would sound natural in everyday English, but are they grammatically acceptable? Are they archaic?
Dear N:
1 and 3 are used occasionally for emphasis. 3 would be the most natural in everyday English, and you do hear it occasionally. 2 and 4 would be grammatically understandable, but would be very awkward and would probably indicate someone who had trouble expressing himself.
None are archaic. Inversion has always been used in English for emphasis, but it also needs to be clear enough to be understandable.
I did not see any mention of differences in punctuation. In American English, the comma and the period are always inside quotes regardless of logic. In British English, the comma and the full stop follow wherever the sentence dictates: inside the quote marks if it belongs to the quote, outside if it belongs to the sentence. e.g., Carefree means “free from care or anxiety”.
Also you may want to mention the differences in meaning of certain words. I embarrassed myself royally when I first arrived in the US and, in my search for school supplies, asked for “rubbers”!
Dear YSM:
Yes, this punctuation is not universal, but it is commonly practiced in Commonwealth countries. We should make clearer mention of it.
Also the grammar checker in Grammar Slammer Deluxe with Checkers gives users the option of checking grammar one way or the other.
We made a decision to stick with grammar, spelling, and usage, rather than vocabulary in our programs and web pages–but not this blog. That would open up a whole new paradigm. I have not checked, but I am sure that there are publications that deal with differences in vocabulary between the two sides of the pond. I have noted visitors to the USA have some difficulty with the use of the word “pants” when they go the UK.
Dear Mr. S___:
You wrote:
>>Can I say “… interdisciplinary teams, who work together with customers …”
>>or should it be “… interdisciplinary teams, which work together with customers …”?
Either is acceptable. In modern usage, “who” normally applies to people and “which” to things, with “that” working for either. However, in this case it does depend on your emphasis.
If you want to emphasize that the teams are made up of individual people, then you would probably want to use “who.” If you are emphasizing the function of the team rather than the makeup (or if, for example, the team were a team of horses…), then “which” would be fine.
You might do better using “who” because it would be less likely to cause offense to someone. I have seen all three–who, which, and that–used in the sports pages to describe teams.
Dear English Plus:
Acting on behalf of my father’s law firm ([firm named here]), I was looking for some grammar authorities on adjectives modifying nouns in a series. Opposing counsel has tried to argue that only the first noun is understood to be modified by the adjective, a position which I, as a writer and sometime tutor and teacher, found absurd when my father asked me about it.
I found this page on a Google search:
https://englishplus.com/news/news1201.htm
and quoted the following passage to my Dad in an e-mail:
“In a series of nouns in English, if there is an article or adjective before the first item only, the article or adjective is understood to be modifying all the nouns in the series.”
He wants to cite your website in his legal brief (or whatever the document’s proper name is…I’m no lawyer) responding to the opposing counsel, and he’s wondering how to do that. I know of some rules for citing websites in research, but before I looked into those I thought I’d try to contact you: specifically, to see if you’re willing to have your work cited in this fashion, and to give your name(s) for proper recognition, etc.
Thanks for your grammatical help — even if you don’t want to be cited, I can tell you you’re in good company with Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech, Svartvik, and the American Heritage Book of English Usage — and for running such an informative site. Cheers.
Dear Mr. B___:
You are welcome to cite the page if you need to.
May all your anguish be vaquished.
Dear A___:
You wrote:
>a. I didn’t tell it to my mother and neither to my father.
>b. I didn’t tell it to my mother and nor to my father.
>c. I didn’t tell it to my mother, neither to my father.
>d. I didn’t tell it to my mother, nor to my father.
>Which of the above sentences are acceptable?
They all have problems.
B is awful, two conjunctions in a row? (“And nor”)
A is understandable, but a native speaker would say “and not to my father either,” if he used “and.”
C is understandable, but you would seldom hear a native speaker say it because of the double negative.
D is also understandable, but normally one would say “or to my father” since the verb is modified by “not.” It is another double negative.
Better than any of the above:
I didn’t tell it to my mother or my father.
I didn’t tell it to either my mother or my father.
(The second “to” in both sentences is optional.)
It you wanted to use “neither” rather than “not,” you could say:
I told neither my mother nor my father.