# Is this sentence grammatically correct? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 25, 2009, 10:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-sentence-grammatically-correct/518963 "2009-11-25T22:01:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Freudian\_Slit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/5daacb/32.png) [@Freudian\_Slit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freudian_Slit)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2009, 2:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-sentence-grammatically-correct/518963/41 "2009-12-01T14:17:10Z")
> [@Serenata67](#): > > I know there’s nothing technically grammatically wrong with it, but it just grates on me. In my head it sounds a little like nails on a chalkboard… I still don’t see that it is grammatically correct. AND it grates on me. It’s like the person’s trying to be clever and failing. ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2009, 2:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-sentence-grammatically-correct/518963/42 "2009-12-01T14:36:17Z")
> [@Freudian\_Slit](#): > > I still don’t see that it is grammatically correct. AND it grates on me. It’s like the person’s trying to be clever and failing. The argument is that it’s grammatically correct according the rules of an archaic dialect of English, and that it’s pragmatically okay to use that dialogue in certain contexts for its connotative value. ---
**Author:** ![Irishman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b487fb/32.png) [@Irishman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Irishman)\ **Post date:** [December 2, 2009, 10:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-sentence-grammatically-correct/518963/43 "2009-12-02T22:20:56Z")
**Gary T** said: > [@](#): > > Typo? Because "the snow fell and continueD to fall expresses what the original sentence said. “…and continueS to fall” would apply if the original were “The snow fell nor has it ceased to fall.” Not a typo, debatable point. Did the author wish to convey that the snow started to fall and fell for some really long time, at some distant time in the past that is now over? Or did he wish to convey that the snow started to fall and has not yet stopped falling? I submit that that his statement easily means the latter as much as the former. But that’s really his fault for using such a contrived sentence structure. ---
**Author:** ![Gary\_T](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/3ec8ea/32.png) [@Gary\_T](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_T)\ **Post date:** [December 2, 2009, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-sentence-grammatically-correct/518963/44 "2009-12-02T23:12:22Z")
> [@Irishman](#): > > Did the author wish to convey that the snow started to fall and fell for some really long time, at some distant time in the past that is now over? Or did he wish to convey that the snow started to fall and has not yet stopped falling? I submit that that his statement easily means the latter as much as the former. I respectfully disagree. It’s in simple past tense which is not normally used to convey the latter. > [@](#): > > But that’s really his fault for using such a contrived sentence structure. Again I disagree. Reading “nor” as “and not,” we can rewrite the sentence as “The snow fell and did not stop [falling].” The unusual sentence structure does not change the tense. The meaning you suggest is normally conveyed by the present perfect tense (“The snow fell and has not stopped.”) or the present tense (“The snow fell and still falls.”). The whole point of these different tenses is to accurately express the different concepts involved. “Did not stop” doesn’t mean the same thing as “has not stopped,” and I’m not aware of people using the former when they mean the latter. ---
**Author:** ![Irishman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b487fb/32.png) [@Irishman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Irishman)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2009, 10:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-sentence-grammatically-correct/518963/45 "2009-12-04T22:33:47Z")
How am I supposed to fucking know what the author fucking intended? He used fucking “nor” in a fucking strange way. His fucking sentence structure is fucking contrived by that very fucking use. But hey, if you want to split hairs over my understanding of what he was not saying clearly, go right ahead. I’m sure you know better what I thought he meant than I do. “The snow fell, and not did it cease to fall.” That’s how I would substitute “and not”, but that’s just me. Doesn’t read so well, does it? To me, it doesn’t have style or appeal or elegance. It is awkward and contrived. I’m willing to concede it could be grammatical, but it is also archaic and stilted. ---
**Author:** ![Contrapuntal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e274bd/32.png) [@Contrapuntal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Contrapuntal)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2009, 10:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-sentence-grammatically-correct/518963/46 "2009-12-04T22:38:09Z")
McCarthy is as innovative and elegant a prose stylist as I have ever seen. He definitely has an unusual voice, and it is hardly fair to him to take a single sentence out of context and criticize it for the way it sounds. [Here](http://books.google.com/books?id=PfmjWho_zOAC&pg=PA81&lpg=PA81&dq=the+snow+fell,+nor+did+it+cease+to+fall&source=bl&ots=xv3sjkUf2M&sig=cAcoIxpTYMGhzba5HF5bGswaYk8&hl=en&ei=bI8ZS-WfOJOktwfD6s2zBA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CBMQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=the%20snow%20fell%2C%20nor%20did%20it%20cease%20to%20fall&f=false)’s the passage. ---
**Author:** ![CookingWithGas](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cookingwithgas/32/485_2.png) [@CookingWithGas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CookingWithGas)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2009, 10:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-sentence-grammatically-correct/518963/47 "2009-12-04T22:53:36Z")
> [@Contrapuntal](#): > > McCarthy is as innovative and elegant a prose stylist as I have ever seen. He definitely has an unusual voice, and it is hardly fair to him to take a single sentence out of context and criticize it for the way it sounds. Here’s a [critique](http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200107/myers)of that author with a broader view of his work (look for the section heading “‘Muscular’ Prose”), thanks to Sid Smith in a discussion from a link provided earlier in this thread by **Frylock**. ---
**Author:** ![KarlGauss](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/karlgauss/32/3713_2.png) [@KarlGauss](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KarlGauss)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2009, 11:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-sentence-grammatically-correct/518963/48 "2009-12-04T23:09:36Z")
> [@Contrapuntal](#): > > [Here](http://books.google.com/books?id=PfmjWho_zOAC&pg=PA81&lpg=PA81&dq=the+snow+fell,+nor+did+it+cease+to+fall&source=bl&ots=xv3sjkUf2M&sig=cAcoIxpTYMGhzba5HF5bGswaYk8&hl=en&ei=bI8ZS-WfOJOktwfD6s2zBA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CBMQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=the%20snow%20fell%2C%20nor%20did%20it%20cease%20to%20fall&f=false)’s the passage. Are you sure? Unless I’m overlooking it on the page, it doesn’t seem to be there. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Seventh\_Deadly\_Finn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/6bbea6/32.png) [@The\_Seventh\_Deadly\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Seventh_Deadly_Finn)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2009, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-sentence-grammatically-correct/518963/49 "2009-12-04T23:30:03Z")
> [@CookingWithGas](#): > > Here’s a [critique](http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200107/myers)of that author with a broader view of his work (look for the section heading “‘Muscular’ Prose”), thanks to Sid Smith in a discussion from a link provided earlier in this thread by **Frylock**. That’s a great essay; thanks for linking it. It confirms my suspicion that McCarthy is willfully affected (and, apparently, allergic to commas). ---
**Author:** ![LilyoftheField](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/13edae/32.png) [@LilyoftheField](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LilyoftheField)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2009, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-sentence-grammatically-correct/518963/50 "2009-12-04T23:58:37Z")
i’m pretty sure it’s actually illegal to use the word ‘nor’ unless it has been preceded by the word ‘neither’. you should probably contact the authorities… ---
**Author:** ![magellan01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@magellan01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/magellan01)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2009, 2:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-sentence-grammatically-correct/518963/51 "2009-12-05T02:44:38Z")
> [@KarlGauss](#): > > I just came across the following sentence in a book I’m reading: > > “The snow fell nor did it cease to fall.” > > Beyond simply sounding awkward, I think it’s also in error grammatically. By that I mean mustn’t some form of a ‘negative’ precede the ‘nor’? In other words, shouldn’t there be a ‘neither’ or a ‘never’ or some other negation before the ‘nor’? Or am I simply demonstrating my simple-minded, naive approach to such things? > > Indeed, the author is no slouch and I’d be more than a little surprised if he made a grammatical error (although it could be a publisher’s typo, I suppose). > > What do you think? > > Thanks! I agree with the posters who think it is wrong. “Nor” is used to show that neither of two things occurred. Since the author relates only one negative event, “nor” seems wrong. For some reason I can’t exactly put my finger on, the addition of some type of stop after “fell” saves it. But as is, I vote not only awkward, but wrong. ---
**Author:** ![CookingWithGas](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cookingwithgas/32/485_2.png) [@CookingWithGas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CookingWithGas)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2009, 2:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-sentence-grammatically-correct/518963/52 "2009-12-05T02:50:30Z")
> [@KarlGauss](#): > > Are you sure? Unless I’m overlooking it on the page, it doesn’t seem to be there. I see it just fine but as a public service I’ll provide it here: > [@Cormac McCarthy](#): > > The snow by now was half a foot on the ground. He floundered out through the trees pulling up the fallen branches where they stuck out of the snow and by the time he had an armload and made his way back to the fire it has burned down to a nest of quaking embers. He threw the branches on the fire and set out again. Hard to stay ahead. The woods were getting dark and the firelight did not reach far. If he hurried he only grew faint. When he looked behind him the boy was trudging through snow half way to his knees gathering limbs and piling them in his arms. > > The snow fell nor did it cease to fall. He woke all night and got up and coaxed the fire to life again. He’d unfolded the tarp and propped one end up it up beneath the tree to try and reflect back the heat from the fire. He looked at the boy’s face sleeping in the orange light. The sunken cheeks streaked with black. He fought the rage. Useless. He didn’t think the boy could travel much more. Even if it stopped snowing the road would be all but impassable. The snow whispered down in the stillness and the sparks rose and dimmed and died in the eternal blackness. And while we’re at it, what does “woke all night” mean? :dubious: Just for fun, I ran this through MS Word grammar check (which is not an authority, like I said, just for fun) and it didn’t like the “nor” without a “not.” But it recommended the following change, which is even more ridiculous than the original and a logical contradiction to boot: _The snow did not fall nor did it cease to fall._ :smack::rolleyes:😃 ---
**Author:** ![Irishman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b487fb/32.png) [@Irishman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Irishman)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2009, 5:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-sentence-grammatically-correct/518963/53 "2009-12-05T05:48:49Z")
Passage edited for grammar and annotated: > [@](#): > > The snow by now was half a foot on the ground. He floundered out through the trees, pulling up the fallen branches where they stuck out of the snow, and by the time he had an armload and made his way back to the fire, it had burned down to a nest of quaking embers[sup]1[/sup] . He threw the branches on the fire and set out again. Hard to stay ahead.[sup]2[/sup] The woods were getting dark, and the firelight did not reach far. If he hurried, he only grew faint. When he looked behind him, the boy was trudging through snow half way to his knees, gathering limbs and piling them in his arms. > > The snow fell, nor did it cease to fall.[sup]3[/sup] He woke all night[sup]4[/sup] and got up and coaxed the fire to life again. He’d unfolded the tarp and propped one end of it up beneath the tree to try and reflect back the heat from the fire. He looked at the boy’s face sleeping in the orange light. The sunken cheeks streaked with black.[sup]5[/sup] He fought the rage.[sup]6[/sup] Useless.[sup]7[/sup] He didn’t think the boy could travel much more. Even if it stopped snowing, the road would be all but impassable. The snow whispered down in the stillness, and the sparks rose and dimmed and died in the eternal blackness. [sup]1[/sup] How do embers quake? Quaking means shaking or shivering. Now I sort of see him trying to suggest even the embers are shivering from the cold, but that is just stupid. [sup]2[/sup] Sentence fragment. [sup]3[/sup] Ignoring the use of nor, it still needs punctuation. [sup]4[/sup] Would be better as “woke repeatedly all night” or “woke frequently all night” or “woke often all night” or “woke continually all night”. Basically, woke needs a modifier or that statement is ungrammatical. He could be awake all night, or he could wake multiple times through the night. [sup]5[/sup] Another sentence fragment. [sup]6[/sup] _The_ rage? What rage? Which rage? Why is there an article in that sentence? It doesn’t belong there. [sup]7[/sup] Technically a sentence fragment, though permissible in this instance as a sort of interjection. Grammatically acceptable. So, is he innovative and elegant? He’s innovative, in the sense of writing things in ways that are not grammatically correct. I certainly wouldn’t call it elegant. **CookingWithGas** said: > [@](#): > > Just for fun, I ran this through MS Word grammar check (which is not an authority, like I said, just for fun) and it didn’t like the “nor” without a “not.” Right. Nor is a negative conjunction. “This or that, not this nor that.” It needs a preceding negative - “neither” or “not”. ---
**Author:** ![Irishman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b487fb/32.png) [@Irishman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Irishman)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2009, 5:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-sentence-grammatically-correct/518963/54 "2009-12-05T05:57:18Z")
Missed one: > [@](#): > > If he hurried, he only grew faint. When he looked behind him, the boy was trudging through snow half way to his knees, gathering limbs and piling them in his[sup]8[/sup] arms. [sup]8[/sup] Whose arms? The boy’s or the man’s? The antecedent is unclear. I suppose the preceding “his” relating to knees technically has same problem, though the closeness to the subject “boy” makes it more clear. But that sentence begins with “he” and “him” referring to the man, then jumps to using them for the boy. In fact, it took several readings to figure out that was supposed to mean the boy was also gathering sticks in his own arms. I couldn’t make sense of how the man looked behind him to see the boy trudging through the snow and then gathering sticks for the man to carry. ---
**Author:** ![Zoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a4c791/32.png) [@Zoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zoe)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2009, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-sentence-grammatically-correct/518963/55 "2009-12-05T14:43:08Z")
**The Seventh Deadly Finn** , for years the movement has been away from commas that are unnecessary for clarity’s safe. The section linked to by **Contrapuntal** is not missing _necessary_ commas, although there are a couple of places where I would not have counted the use of a comma as a mistake. > [@](#): > > **CookingWithGas** : Here’s a critique of that author with a broader view of his work (look for the section heading “‘Muscular’ Prose”), thanks to Sid Smith in a discussion from a link provided earlier in this thread by Frylock. Oh yes. The same Sid Smith who doesn’t care for Hemingway. He longs for the return of longer and more complex sentences. (That’s fine by me. I liked Thomas Wolfe after Max Perkins had worked his magic.) ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2009, 2:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-sentence-grammatically-correct/518963/56 "2009-12-05T14:47:40Z")
> [@Irishman](#): > > Passage edited for grammar and annotated: > [sup]1[/sup] How do embers quake? Quaking means shaking or shivering. Now I sort of see him trying to suggest even the embers are shivering from the cold, but that is just stupid. > > [sup]2[/sup] Sentence fragment. > > [sup]3[/sup] Ignoring the use of nor, it still needs punctuation. > > [sup]4[/sup] Would be better as “woke repeatedly all night” or “woke frequently all night” or “woke often all night” or “woke continually all night”. Basically, woke needs a modifier or that statement is ungrammatical. He could be awake all night, or he could wake multiple times through the night. > > [sup]5[/sup] Another sentence fragment. > > [sup]6[/sup] _The_ rage? What rage? Which rage? Why is there an article in that sentence? It doesn’t belong there. > > [sup]7[/sup] Technically a sentence fragment, though permissible in this instance as a sort of interjection. Grammatically acceptable. > > So, is he innovative and elegant? He’s innovative, in the sense of writing things in ways that are not grammatically correct. I certainly wouldn’t call it elegant. > > **CookingWithGas** said: > > Right. Nor is a negative conjunction. “This or that, not this nor that.” It needs a preceding negative - “neither” or “not”. Are you serious about the sentence fragments, or am I missing a joke? Do you really think writers–fiction writers no less–should never use sentence fragments? ---
**Author:** ![Zoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a4c791/32.png) [@Zoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zoe)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2009, 8:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-sentence-grammatically-correct/518963/57 "2009-12-05T20:45:45Z")
**Frylock** , I’m with you about license to use sentence fragments. But in at least one spot this author does use a fragment awkwardly. This is a passage followed with my suggestions for change: > [@](#): > > **McCarthy** : He’d unfolded the tarp and propped one end of it up beneath the tree to try and reflect back the heat from the fire. He looked at the boy’s face sleeping in the orange light. The sunken cheeks streaked with black. He unfolded the tarp and propped one end on the tree to reflect the heat from the fire. He looked at the face of the boy sleeping in the light, the sunken cheeks streaked with black. I agree with **Irishman** about the excessiveness of “quaking” embers even though at first I was ready to defend their metaphorical use. It’s just not really an intelligent metaphor, is it? I had absolutely no problems with _woke_ or _nor_. **Nor** did I have any difficulties with knowing who was behind whom in the snow and who was holding the pile of sticks or small limbs. I suspect that “the rage” requires more context. It’s possible they may be lost in a storm due to someone’s negligence. ---
**Author:** ![KarlGauss](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/karlgauss/32/3713_2.png) [@KarlGauss](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KarlGauss)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2009, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-sentence-grammatically-correct/518963/58 "2009-12-05T21:34:50Z")
> [@Irishman](#): > > [sup]4[/sup] Would be better as “woke repeatedly all night” or “woke frequently all night” or “woke often all night” or “woke continually all night”. Basically, woke needs a modifier or that statement is ungrammatical. He could be awake all night, or he could wake multiple times through the night. I think McCarthy’s using a definition of woke with which you’re not familiar. Woke, as McCarthy employs it, is the past tense of wake, with wake meaning “to be or continue to be awake” (definition from [dictionary.com](http://dictionary.com)) or “to be or remain awake” (from Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary). ---
**Author:** ![Superhal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Superhal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Superhal)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2009, 10:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-sentence-grammatically-correct/518963/59 "2009-12-05T22:41:59Z")
Quick comment about grammar: “Grammar rules” are an illusion. They are a (flimsy) structure placed around real phenomena (language) that we don’t fully understand yet. As language changes all the time, grammar struggles to keep up, and we end up with contradictions, such as Strunk and White’s infamous apostrophe-possession argument. Technically, the way “grammar” is defined now is through native speaker intuition. If we show a sentence to a bunch of native speakers of that language, will the majority agree that it is correct or an error? One of the most infamous examples is the “a/an” distinction. The old rule was “with consonants, a; with vowels, an.” However, this is completely false. It’s not the letter that decides the article, it’s the sound: a house vs an hour a universe vs an unusual occurrence. There’s also a completely undocumented group of these types of rules based on sound, not on syntax. For example, everybody knows that if you have a singular subject, you need an “s” on any simple present verbs paired with that subject: The doctor **agrees** … vs. The doctors **agree** … In studies, native speakers are consistently “wrong” (according to canonical “grammar”) when shown sentences like this: The **group** of doctors \_\_\_\_\_… vs **Two** cacti \_\_\_\_\_. In the former case, the verb takes an S. In the latter case, it doesn’t, but native speakers want to reverse it because they want to put an “s” sound somewhere inside the subject and the verb. So, to answer your question: from the responses in this thread, most of the native speakers say it sounds odd, but is acceptable, and thus it would be correct. I also agree that if we look at the “canonical” grammar rule about “nor” usage, it would be wrong. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2009, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-sentence-grammatically-correct/518963/60 "2009-12-06T00:50:57Z")
The rule for “a” and “an” has always been that “a” goes with a consonant sound and “an” goes with a vowel sound. There’s no such old rule as you claim. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-sentence-grammatically-correct/518963.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-sentence-grammatically-correct/518963.md?page=4)