Dear A K:

You wrote:

Can one say:

a. I have a plan for you to get rich.

b. I have a plan to get rich for you.

I have a plan for you. You can use it to get rich.

You may hear English speakers say such a sentence either way, and it does mean the same thing. However, sentence a is more easily understood. Because the phrase “to get rich” immediately follows “plan” in sentence b, the listener is going to first think that the speaker has his own plan to get rich. That confusion is eliminated in sentence a because the listener understands immediately that the plan is for him, not for the speaker.

Dear N;

You wrote:

1-The writer the number of whose books we did not know started speaking.

2-The writer the number of books written by whom we did not know started speaking.

3-The writer the number of whose books was not known to us started speaking.

4-The writer the number of books written by whom was unknown to us started speaking. We did not know how many books this one particular writer had written, He started speaking.

All of these sound terrible. At the very least they need commas. 2 and 4 without any punctuation make no sense at all. These are all very awkward, and no one would speak or write this way. The last unnumbered sentence is fine except for the comma splice—you need a semicolon or a period.

These are the kind of sentences that people joke about because sentences like them are sometimes found in government documents. Do  not make yourself a laughingstock, avoid such language!

Dear Mr. S:

You wrote:

 You recommend use of periods after the abbreviations, but that is completely opposite of Chicago Manual of Style, Microsoft Manual of style, and many other manuals.

Thank you for the note. This is something that is changing. We put this together nearly 20 years ago, and most sources in North America still recommended periods except for metric measurements and obvious acronyms.

It may be necessary for us to qualify our recommendations. As with other issues where not all authorities agree, whichever way you choose, be consistent.

Dear A:

You wrote:

a. He talked to Jeff, angrily.

b. He threw the ball, with all his force.

Normally, the commas in these sentences would be considered superfluous. However, I think they might fulfill two functions: 1. They might indicate that what follows them is an afterthought. In this case they would be reflecting a pause in speech. 2. They might make the second part becomes parenthetical and increase the weight of the first part. The second part becomes parenthetical/ What did he do? He talked to Jeff, and (what’s more) he did it angrily. He threw the ball, and (what’s more) he did it with all his force.

Would you say that analysis is correct?

I understand what you are saying, and some people do use commas that way. However, it tends to be confusing because commas usually mean something else. If you want to show the afterthought, use a dash. That is the main reason we use dashes—as an afterthought or for emphasis. That way, too, there is no ambiguity about what you are trying to say.

Dear Mr. T:

You wrote:

Can one use:

 1-Hadn’t he opened the door, I wouldn’t have seen him.

instead of:

2-Had he not opened the door, I wouldn’t have seen him.

Can one use:

3-Weren’t he such a fool, he would have accepted your offer.

instead of:

4-Were he not such a fool, he would have accepted your offer.

All four are technically OK, but in normal speech only #2 or #4 would be used. In most cases when the contraction is used, the listener is assuming the speaker is asking a question. We would probably hear: “Hadn’t he opened the door? I wouldn’t have seen him.”

#3 might be a bit more clear because it is using the subjunctive which is rarely, if ever, interrogative, but it could still cause some confusion.

Dear Mr. J:

You wrote:

I keep seeing “Need Gone” on Facebook and other selling pages. When did this horrid expression become so popular? I am not that smart can you tell me why need gone is bad?

 I need gone

We Need Gone

Furniture Need gone

Dog Gone, all above are very poor English.  The furniture is sold (not gone). How about I would like to sell quickly? 

I guess I do not use Facebook enough to see that expression. I think the problem is that it is ambiguous even when grammatically OK. For example, does “We need gone furniture” mean “We need furniture that is gone” or “We need our furniture to be gone”?

Your web page says:

Gone or Went?

Gone is the past participle of to go. Used as the verb of a sentence, it must always be preceded by an auxiliary verb such as has, have, had, is, am, are, was, were, be, or one of their contractions. Went is the past tense of to go. It never takes an auxiliary verb.

Incorrect: They gone to the movies. (Gone needs an auxiliary verb.)

Correct: They have gone to the movies.

Correct: They are gone to the movies.

Correct: They went to the movies.

Incorrect: You could have went with them. (Went takes no auxiliary verb.)

Correct: You could have gone with them.
Technically, any past participle can be used as an adjective, but since “go” is always intransitive, the meaning would often be ambiguous in English. We tend to put it in clauses or phrases as I did in the two examples above: “that is gone” (clause) and “to be gone” (phrase). Other languages use participles where English would use a clause or an infinitive phrase.

I would not be surprised to find that “need gone” may sometimes simply be the result of an online “translator” like Babelfish, translating a language with different grammar into English. For example, many Eastern European languages use participles that way, and many Asian languages do not distinguish among parts of speech the same way English does. It might come from something originally written in some such language.

Back in the fifties and early sixties, “gone” was used as a slang adjective to mean “good,” especially among beatniks, e.g. “He was a really gone drummer.” The hippies changed that to “far out” later in the sixties. But that does not appear to be such a throwback in the examples you gave.

Where we are located near New York City, so the common misuse is not with “gone” as much as “went.” In this area you can hear a lot of “have went.”