<p>Can anyone explain to me the proper use of "being" in a sentence?</p>
<p>There are many SAT sentences in which the word "being" appears. Sometimes the word is considered to be used in the right place, most of the times it is not. But I really want to know how to use "being" properly. Grammar experts I would appreciate your help.</p>
<p>It’s usually an idiom misuse or having 2 things being equated when they don’t agree in number</p>
<p>Thanks garfield. Do you have any examples to illustrate what you mean?</p>
<p>There are four cases you should consider:
Gerundial composition consists of the possessive pronoun and present participle, which includes “being”. Although this structure is gramamtically correct, it is considered awkward (and wrong) in terms of the SAT.</p>
<p>Idioms like “incapable of being” also include the use of present participle.</p>
<p>“Being” is also acceptable when the elimination of “being” would sacrifice parallelism. For example:
I like skiing, biking, and being optimistic.
NOT “I like skiing, biking, and to be optimistic” because the use of “to be” will destroy parallelism of the sentence.</p>
<p>(noun) of being (past participle) is also acceptable.
Example: Bees take frequent flights at the risk of being eaten by predators.</p>
<p>But note that except for these exceptions, you should generally take a grain of salt at “being” because it tends to contribute to sentence fragments, among other grammatical problems. I’d estimate that when you mark answer choices with “being” as WRONG, your chance of being correct would be 95% (19 correct out of 20 attempts).</p>
<p>Look at this example:</p>
<p>In addition to (being) a talented pianist and composer, Bela Bartok was a (respected) musicologist (who wrote) several books on Hungarian, Slovakian, and Romanian folk music. (No error)</p>
<p>The answer is no error. I know that being is correctly used but thats just from my ear. From a grammatical standpoint, how is being parallel with the past tense "was’ and “who wrote”?</p>
<p>“In addition to (being) a talented pianist and composer,”
Isn’t this an adverbial phrase?</p>
<p>So in a nutshell the sentence would be this:
Bela Bartok was a (respected) musicologist.</p>
<p>And I don’t see why “being” is supposed to be parallel with “was” and “who wrote”.</p>
<p>My apologies. Not parrellel. What I meant was in the same tense as was which is the past tense. I thought that being indicates a present tense. I’m not a grammar junkie so I have no idea what adverbial means lol.</p>
<p>I’m not a grammar junkie either, but I’m pretty sure being works for the past tense because I can’t think of another word to replace it.</p>