Hello, My advisor states that this sentence is grammatically incorrect, yet I can't see where. Library staff was forced to—not only adapt themselves to the digital world—but also help patrons critically evaluate and use it. Can anyone help me? Thank-you.
I guess your advisor's principal objection is to the use of 'was' which should be 'were' . Your dashes don't really work either. I would drop them.
Agreed! The dashes look like em dashes. Intrigued? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dash#Em_dash Worth a look if you don't know what an em dash is. Info on en dashes and the swung dash as well, to keep you out of trouble for a while. Dash heaven, really!
You could get rid of the em dashes. The problem is the em dashes are putting an aside into the sentence. You need to be able to remove the aside and the sentence should stand on its own. Your sentence can't function that way, though: Library staff was forced to but also help patrons critically evaluate and use it. Get rid of the em dashes or rewrite the sentence.
Library staff were forced to not only adapt themselves to the digital world, but also help patrons critically evaluate and use it.
I would say: libray staff were forced to adapt themselves to the digital world and help patrons critically evaluate and use it. my question: do you need to use ''not only'' ??
as do i! in re the need for 'not only' i see it as necessary, in order to make it clear that the second part of the sentence describes a further imposition on the staff...
I would go for "Library staff were forced not only to adapt themselves to the digital world, but also to help patrons critically evaluate and use it." I'm happy to split an infinitive when it helps the sentence, but here I think the extra clarity produced by keeping the infinitives together is worth the repetition of a two-letter word.
It depends. The meaning of the sentence is changed if you omit it. With it the sentence implies "as well as the expected thing there was something else". Without it there are just two things, with no comment on whether they were expected or not. All too often the "not only ... but also" form is just padding and the simpler form is actually what's meant. But if the "and also" bit really is an extra then the sentence needs the "not only ... but also".
The questioner doesn't show a location. What you say is correct (as I understand it) for US English. In British English the former could be 'was' or 'were'.
Your advisor is right. There is a split infinitive, and lack of verb/subject agreement: Library staff were forced not only to adapt themselves to the digital world, but also to help patrons critically evaluate and use it. If you have 'not only...but also' for emphasis, it becomes unnecessary to have the em dashes as well. Also, em dashes should be used very sparingly in formal academic English writing. Ditto digitig's observation that outside the US, staff (and family, company and a few others) can be either singular or plural are right. However, as you put 'themselves' you must have 'were' after staff.
Whether a split infinitive is actually a grammatical mistake, though, is a rather controversial issue.
In reference to the "was" versus "were" issue, I tend to agree that "was" is more correct than "were". If you view a staff as several people, which it is, then "were" seems correct. However, if it's a staff viewed as one entity, than I would think "was" is more correct. What say you?
