“He said the fight began over a disagreement over grammar as well as their views on sports teams”: Grammar dispute becomes brawl (Beaver Dam Daily Citizen).
One of the BDDC ’s commenters might benefit from reading this post. If the brawl concerned the use of the subjunctive, the brawlers might benefit from reading it too.
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October 4: The alleged brawler has pleaded not guilty.
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February 5, 2015: The brawler has been — no pun intended — sentenced.
[Garner’s Modern American Usage: “pleaded is the predominant form in both AmE and BrE and always the best choice.”]
Wednesday, July 9, 2014
Grammar brawl
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comments: 3
Were I to remove the if in front of "If I was to train..." and restructure the sentence thusly, "Was I to train...", I think your feeling of something being not quite right would settle the question once and for all.
Was I close in my explanation? I would have had an unsettled feeling about that sentence, too.
(One of those serendipitous synchronicites that occasionally pop up in the Prove you're not a robot: the number this time [3915] was the house number from where I lived in New Orleans more than 50 years ago.)
I like the alternative I came up with: “If I train,” and so on. “Was I to . . .” sounds to my ear like the start of a question: “Was I supposed to . . . ” But after a while, everything begins to sound uncertain.
Don’t forget: Blogger is a Google offering. That number can hardly be a coincidence. :)
Yikes! Your last sentence has fed the paranoid, hyper-vigilant gatekeeper to my vault of conspiracy theories. It will be chewing on that bone, so to speak, for the rest of the night.
Just visited Dreamers Rise, read a few posts, listed to Cold Case Blues. Neat place to visit.
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