In Verbs^x, Word order^x

Hello again, Mask. I musunderstood your question, but I see what you mean now. Just like many other English words, "than" belongs to more than one class. It is a preposition in sentences like "She is taller than me", and it is a conjunction in sentences like "She is taller than I (am)." In other...

Dear Miriam, Your interpretation of the first stanza was very intereting. Infact I'm going to tell my students to think about your interpretation. You are right. there is no fun if we take things literally when it comes to understanding a poem. By the way, You may want to read what people in...

Hi, Do you know what the matter is? This one is correct. 'what the matter is' is the object of the verb 'know'. In a noun clause beginning with a question word, the subject precedes the verb. Do not use question word order in a noun clause. Does that help?

I was recently presented with two sentences: "She already has her first client lined up." and "She has already lined up her first client." The person who showed me these sentences was interested in how to classify the verbs; which are auxiliary verbs and which objects go with which verbs. Of...

All of your sentences are correct. The choice of where to position the "maybe" is one of style rather than grammatical necessity. If style is what you'd like to improve on, I would suggest getting rid of the "was...maybe" structure altogether: He saw something that may have been a ghost. It...

Dear Andrewdust: As I promised, I have reviewed your short story and taken the liberty of making suggested corrections. Again, I want to congratulate you on a well written document. You have real talent that you should continue to develop. I would suggest that you purchase "The Elements of...

There's a trick you can sometimes use to figure this out. If the word order is , chances are it's active voice. If the word order is , chances are it's passive voice. This doesn't always work. Some verbs are intransitive, sometimes subject or object are omitted, sometimes the word order is...

It's what the British call an "Americanism", as it seems to be a practice which originated there. Television and the internet mean the British are starting to do it too. In summary: The English tend to use adverbs correctly. The Americans do things different. It is formally incorrect. HOWEVER...

"At that time" means "at a particular MOMENT" - say, for example, ten past three on Sunday afternoon. "In that time" means "within a given INTERVAL" - say, the interval while you were at work yesterday. Both of the above are adverb phrases, because the preposition converts the noun phrase "that...

"mountain" is a noun, however the wider sentence does not (cannot) treat this word in isolation, or as part of its OWN syntax. It's just like in math, when you say: 1+2*3, you have to parse (2*3) FIRST before you can parse the rest, which then becomes 1+6. If you parse things in the wrong order,...