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The Official Grammar Thread

post #1 of 8
12/2/11 at 11:57am
Thread Starter 
There have been questions of grammar here and there on the forum, but I thought it would be good to put it all in one place. I remember when I first took college English and wrote my first paper it came back to me bleeding with red ink. Ultimately, the professor thought what I said was good, but I had horrible grammar. I feel that I have learned a little bit since that time, however my grammar still bugs me quite a bit. I think about different tidbits often and I know there are some writers here and people who seem to have much better diction and prose than myself that might be able to help me out.

I will kick off the thread with the word "that". Does it change meaning, or is it more or less formal to use when not a noun? For example, the first sentence in, Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf reads, "Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself." Ok, this is fine, however my first thought while reading this is that I would have included "that" so it would read, "Mrs. Dalloway said that she would buy the flowers herself."

Does this change the meaning?
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post #2 of 8
12/2/11 at 12:03pm
no, not really, the lack of 'that' is a reflection of time period more than anything else
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post #3 of 8
12/2/11 at 12:10pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Teger View Post

no, not really, the lack of 'that' is a reflection of time period more than anything else

Hmm, interesting.
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post #4 of 8
12/2/11 at 12:23pm
if you want to see something really interesting, try to read handwriting from the 1800s
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post #5 of 8
12/2/11 at 1:02pm
Thread Starter 
Yeah, I know it.
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post #6 of 8
12/2/11 at 6:47pm
The "that" is a relative pronoun. In English, it can be omitted without changing the sense. "The tie I bought" = "the tie that I bought." The relative pronoun "whom" works the same way: "he is the man to whom I gave the money" = "he is the man I gave the money to." Including the relative pronoun marks the usage as somewhat more formal. (In some languages, you can't omit the relative pronoun. For example, in French you'd say "l'homme que j'aime." You can't say "l'homme j'aime.")
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post #7 of 8
12/6/11 at 7:37am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by L'Incandescent View Post

The "that" is a relative pronoun. In English, it can be omitted without changing the sense. "The tie I bought" = "the tie that I bought." The relative pronoun "whom" works the same way: "he is the man to whom I gave the money" = "he is the man I gave the money to." Including the relative pronoun marks the usage as somewhat more formal. (In some languages, you can't omit the relative pronoun. For example, in French you'd say "l'homme que j'aime." You can't say "l'homme j'aime.")

I was always taught that "whom" should be used when a proposition is introduced. "To whom it may concern", or as you put, "he is the man, to whom I gave the money."
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post #8 of 8
12/6/11 at 7:55am
Quote:
Originally Posted by patrickBOOTH View Post

I was always taught that "whom" should be used when a proposition is introduced. "To whom it may concern", or as you put, "he is the man, to whom I gave the money."

Do you mean preposition? "Whom" is the object form of "who." In other words, whenever the person being referred to is in the object position--direct object, indirect object, object of preposition, etc--then you say "whom." If in the subject position, you say "who." So that's what explains the rule about prepositions: if the person being referred to is coming after a preposition, it's an object and therefore a "whom." (There are some exceptions to this. It works just like "he" and "him" in that way.) In many cases you can avoid the issue by dropping the pronoun: "He is the man I gave the money to." But sometimes not: you don't want to say "To the person it concerns!"
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