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Sentence Structure for Writers (2017)

(blog.oup.com)
84 points onemind | 1 comments | 13 Nov 24 22:17 UTC | HN request time: 0.935s | source
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BoostandEthanol ◴[17 Nov 24 14:51 UTC] No.42164462[source]▶
Am I missing something here or does the very first example break this article’s own point?

“It was nice of John and Mary to come and visit us the other day,” is 8 words before the verb come.

“For John and Mary to come and visit us the other day was nice,” is only five, focused solely on the subject with no additional information (how the author felt about their visit)

Yet personally the second one reads easier for me, so I guess that reinforces the point to me specifically? Although I agree it’s unusual.

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1. pm215 ◴[17 Nov 24 15:09 UTC] No.42164557[source]▶
The main verb in the sentence in both cases is "was". "come" is in a subclause, and it's that subclause that is the "weightier" part of the sentence that the author says should come later in the sentence.

Incidentally, the two sentences don't really say the same thing -- the first is saying John and Mary did something nice for the speaker, and the second is so weirdly phrased it's hard to figure out what it's intending to say but it's hard to interpret it as having the same meaning as the first. It would need to end "...was nice of them" to be that, I think.