# "If having any questions, please feel free to ask." Correct or incorrect grammar?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-having-any-questions-please-feel-free-to-ask-correct-or-incorrect-grammar/279837>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [December 14, 2004, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-having-any-questions-please-feel-free-to-ask-correct-or-incorrect-grammar/279837 "2004-12-14T19:50:37Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![Scissorjack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c67d28/32.png) [@Scissorjack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scissorjack)\
**Post date:** [December 16, 2004, 8:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-having-any-questions-please-feel-free-to-ask-correct-or-incorrect-grammar/279837/21 "2004-12-16T08:22:18Z")

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> [@Left Hand of Dorkness](#):
>
> “If having questions” doesn’t use the “possess” definition of “have,” unless “Having a bad day” uses that definition.

In this usage, it is synonymous with “possess” - it is possible to possess things which are not tangible. “I have a question” is functionally equivalent to “I have a gun”: compare “I have a dream…”. “I possess a dream” would have made for an odd speech, but the meaning is clear enough.

“I’m having a bad day” is probably more clear-cut, since “experience” can be directly substituted as a synonym: “I’m experiencing a bad day” - rather clumsy, but perfectly acceptable. “I’m experiencing a question”, on the other hand, doesn’t work at all.

Unfortunately, in English “have” has a lot of related but not exactly synonymous meanings to bear:

I’m having dinner  
I’m having friends to dinner  
I have an exam  
We had an argument  
They had an accident  
I had an operation  
She had a baby  
I’ll have a go  
I have an idea

You can see some underlying nexus of meaning which connects all these usages, but it’s very difficult to summarise.

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**Author:** ![Excalibre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@Excalibre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Excalibre)\
**Post date:** [December 16, 2004, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-having-any-questions-please-feel-free-to-ask-correct-or-incorrect-grammar/279837/22 "2004-12-16T19:14:38Z")

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Uh, after all that, if you’re still confused, the natural way to phrase it in English would be, “If you have any questions, please feel free to ask.” This sounds perfectly normal to me; it wouldn’t elicit any comment. (“Having any questions”, as mentioned, isn’t a clause on its own in English, since gerunds are, grammatically, nouns or adjectives, not verbs. Thus the “if” clause lacks a main verb in your example.)

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