Reader Questions: Verb placement
Carisa e-mailed with a question:
I have a question about verb placement that I think is a matter of proper syntax vs. a more readable, colloquial style. Here’s the sentence:
“This document will reveal how close was the decision to change the current policy.”
I sense that this is correct, but I can’t come up with the rule to explain why. However, colloquially, I think people would expect this:
“This document will reveal how close the decision was to change the current policy.”
Then, there’s this, which I think is colloquially common but just plain wrong:
“This document will reveal how close the decision to change the current policy was.”
Do you know what the rules applying to such a sentence would be?
Before I give my answer, let’s hear from some of you. What do you think the answer to Carisa’s question is?
I’m heading out of town for the weekend, so post your thoughts in the comments, and we’ll talk about it on Monday.
Roy Jacobsen
Kitty and Ray both have identified the issue here: You want to avoid putting too many words between the subject and the verb. At the same time, you don’t want to split a modifier (an adjective or adverb) from the word it’s modifying. So in a case like this, you end up torn between splitting verb and subject and splitting modifier and noun.
That’s when I look for other ways to get the idea across. For example, I thought of breaking the sentence into two, like this:
The decision to change the current policy was close. This document will reveal how close it was.
Yes, we’re using more words, but you’re using two shorter, clearer sentences instead of one more complicated one.
I also wondered if we need to know more about who made the decision (and there may be valid reasons why that isn’t addressed here). If we wanted to introduce that, we could cast the first sentence in active voice:
The council decided by a narrow margin to change the current policy. This document will reveal how narrow that margin was.
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Reader Comments (2)
I certainly don't think the last one is wrong.
My instinct is that the decision to change the current policy should all go together, since the phrase to change the current policy modifies the decision. So that rules out the second option.
When I ignore to change the current policy, it seems obvious that "The document will reveal how close the decision was" sounds the most natural. So I'd go with number three. Number one sounds more like a question: "How close was the decision?" It's correct, but it seems a bit stuffy as a declarative sentence.
Normally with a sentence like this, I'd try to rewrite it: "The document will reveal the closeness of the decision to change the current policy"? Meh. Not much better, but maybe.
I don't know whether I'd call it a rule, but generally you don't want too many words between the subject and the verb in a clause. According to that "rule," The first two choices are fine -- the verb "was" is right next to the subject "decision." Of those two, the second comes more naturally because we're used to seeing the verb follow the subject rather than precede it.
The third choice really isn't incorrect. Actually it is in keeping with another rule: keep your modifiers close to what they modify. The phrase "to change ..." modifies "decision," and the third choice puts the two as close together as possible. And though there's a gap between subject and verb, the sentence is understandable on first reading.
The first choice keeps both proximity rules, but at the cost of breaking the "rule" about the normal order of subject and verb in a clause. Maybe that's what Carisa senses is wrong with it.