What, you never heard of the grammar game? Neither have I, but it sounds fun. Rules: The person that gets the answer correct, gets to post the next question. The question needs to be grammar related. Hopefully the grammarians can be sure no mistakes are made. I for one think I could learn a lot from this game. Let's get started shall we? Question: What is wrong with the following sentence and why? Would it be possible for Karen and I to go to the movies tonight?
Without Karen, the original sentence would be, "Would it be possible for I to go to the movies tonight?" The personal pronoun is supposed to be the object of that sentence, not the subject. ... I think...?
Yay! Okay, concerning the following two sentences: Which of the following statements are true? (Or, bonus, please tell me if this should this be "Which of the following statements is true?" because only one statement is true, but there are four statements -- I honestly do not know this.) a.) Both sentences are true. b.) Both sentences are false. c.) The first sentence is true, the second sentence is false. d.) The first sentence is false, the second sentence is true.
If these were the only choices to choose from I would go with b. Most of the time affect is a verb, and effect is a noun, but there is the rare exceptions for both. If you want to come up with another question, that is fine.
Question: Is the following sentence correct or incorrect and why? Every one of the workmen want more money. (After I thought about it some more I changed my mind. I think it should be, which of the following statements is true.)
It is incorrect. Every one is a collective singular noun phrase, and there is thus a verb disagreement for said. It should read: Every one of the workmen wants more money.
I was hoping someone would want to take a crack at this. It is okay to be wrong. We can learn a lot by being wrong. I will take my crack at it. I am not good with technical grammar language. I think the wording is odd, and would be better if written if I were you, I would do otherwise. I believe, would that I were you, is like an if clause, and if clauses even though were is plural is used.
Yes, the wording is a bit archaic for this conditional clause. The more modern form would be If I were you... Strict proscriptive grammarians would object to the use of If as the initiator of a conditional clause like this. Therein lies the trouble with proscriptive grammer. How far back does one reach for the arbitrary line indicating, "The language if this period shall evermore be the benchmark." I like using archaic forms. My question here is the use of the verb form were as opposed to was for the conditional. You have guessed correctly! Your turn.
Conditional clause, that is the technical phrase I was looking for. If anything is wrong with the following sentence, what is it, and why? The camps were filled with thousands of displaced persons; deprived of home and country by the fortunes of war.
The second part of the sentence is a participle phrase fragment. To correct this problem the simicolon needs to be a comma. The camps were filled with thousands of displaced persons, deprived of home and country by the fortunes of war. This is the correct version. Here is another question. What is wrong with the following sentence if anything? She is one of those girls who is too shy to be popular.
