6 Grammar questions

<ol>
<li>The winds kicked up so much dust A.(during) the storm B.(that) the air-traffic controllers C.(could not) scarcely see the planes they D.(were guiding). E.No error</li>
</ol>

<p>The answer is C, why? </p>

<ol>
<li><p>Is planning "on attending" an idiom error? It should be plan to attend, right? Also, in the sentence: "Were it not for the kid, he would have gone to jail," shouldn't were be was? </p></li>
<li><p>The doctor warned all his patients A.(to be) B.(especially careful) C.(because) the upcoming season's flu promised to be highly D.(communicative). E. no error</p></li>
</ol>

<p>Why is the answer D?</p>

<ol>
<li>The principle is A.(clear all) contestants should B.(be given) an equal opportunity to C.(fully) prepare D.(for the science fair). E. no error</li>
</ol>

<p>Why is the answer, A?
5. The collection A.(of) short stories B.(by) Hemingway contains C.(not only) comic elements but D.(also contains) tragic elements. E.no error </p>

<p>Why is the answer D, i thought is was E?</p>

<ol>
<li>The A.(amount) of people who go to the library B.(these days) is far less now that C.(so much) D.(research) is accessible on the internet. E. No error</li>
</ol>

<p>Why is the answer A.</p>

<p>Thanks a lot people, appreciate the help and advice.</p>

<p>1) With the word “scarcely,” the phrase “could not” creates a double negative. The meaning is that the air traffic controllers had a hard time seeing the planes, due to the dust. So you’d want just “could,” rather than “could not.” A similar situation crops up with the use of “hardly.” If something is difficult, bordering on impossible, you’d say X could hardly Y, rather than X could not hardly Y.</p>

<p>2) No, it should be “Were.” The statement indicates a condition contrary to fact. The kid (perhaps by existence, perhaps by testimony) prevented the man from going to jail. When you have a condition contrary to fact, you need a different mood of the verb from the indicative. The indicative would use “Was.” The mood here is often called subjunctive, and it uses “were” for the singular, in place of “was.”</p>

<p>To give another pair of examples:
Suppose it is not raining today. Then you might say, “If it were raining, I would not have walked to the library.” (You did walk to the library.)
On the other hand, suppose that last month, you walked to the library every day when it wasn’t raining, and you never walked to the library when it was raining. Then you might say, “If it was raining the first Tuesday in July, then I did not walk to the library that day.”
This is not expressing a condition that is known to be contrary to fact. The “If” in this case expresses your uncertainty about the actual weather on that day.</p>

<p>3) Word choice error. The flu is highly “communicable,” because it is highly contagious. It is not highly “communicative,” because the flu does not converse with you, and it doesn’t convey information or emotion.</p>

<p>4) This sentence would probably be classified as a “run on.” It contains two independent clauses. The principle is clear. All contestants should be given an opportunity to . . .
They can’t just be stuck together. There would be a few ways of fixing this.
The two clauses could be converted to separate sentences.
The wording could be changed to something like "The principle is clear that all contestants . . .
The clauses could be separated by an appropriate punctuation mark. In this case, I would favor : personally, because the second clause states the clear principle.</p>

<p>I think an argument could be made that C is also wrong. “To fully prepare” is a split infinitive. That is, it has “to” with another word inserted ahead of the verb. Some guides to grammar insist that split infinitives should be avoided. Others consider this a hold-over from Latin, which need not be observed in English. Yet others spent so many years listening to William Shatner say “to boldly go where no man has gone before” that the entire concept of a split infinitive is lost on them.</p>

<p>5) When you have the construction “not only X, but also Y,” X and Y need to be strictly parallel. In this case, the word “contains” precedes the “not only” phrase. Therefore, X = “comic elements.” Y must be parallel to that. The parallel form is Y = “tragic elements,” not Y = “contains tragic elements.”</p>

<p>6) The word “amount” refers to something that cannot be counted in integers. Therefore, you don’t have an “amount” of people, you have a “number” of people. </p>

<p>However, you can have an amount of some things that might conceivably be enumerated. For example, I would probably refer to an “amount” of salt, although one could possibly count individual salt crystals. Similarly, I would refer to an “amount” of sand, even though one could count the grains.</p>

<p>A related grammatical issue is the use of “fewer” vs. “less.” When you have people/things that can be counted, the correct usage is “fewer.” “Less” people would technically describe non-integer numbers of people.</p>

<p>Thanks a lot your awesome, yeah!</p>