Which is grammatically correct?
“How many phone calls are we making and receiving, per day, over the past 30 days?”
or
“How many phone calls are we making and receiving per day over the past 30 days?”
This is really bugging me to the point I dug out my old copy of Elements of Style . And of course the case could be made that “over the past” ought to be “during the past” too. :smack:
I was taught that if text can be removed without wrecking the sentence, slap some commas around it. In which case:
“How many phone calls are we making and receiving, per day, over the past 30 days?”
would be correct. (The per day can be omited, and you still have a complete sentence).
I’m sure someone will be along to tell me I’m full of dung.
The only thing more grammatically squishy than the comma is the hyphen. As an editor, I’d favor the first, but I wouldn’t go to the mat over it if the author insisted on the second.
I might have written it as, “For the past thirty days, how many calls have come in and out per day?” --which is slightly more colloquial, but sounds a hair less bumpy to my ear.
Me, I’m more worried about verb tenses than punctuation: “how many phone calls have we made or do we make [rather than ‘are we making’]…?”
How about “Over the last 30 days, how many phones calls are we making and receiving each day?” Or “How many phone calls per day are we making and receiving, over the past 30 days?” which I think is best.
This sentence will look wierd as you have the phrase “making and receiving” so you see the word “and” in there when you write it.
I’m with Twickster on this one.
Why not: Over the past 30 days, how many phone calls did we make or receive per day?
I guess if you really wanted to have the two phrases crashing into each other you could say: How many phone calls did we make or receive per day, over the past 30 days?
Another problem is that the request is unclear. Are you asking for the 30-day average of daily call volume or do you want a day-by-day tabulation? Should it be broken down into outgoing and incoming?
I probably would have phrased it someting like “How many in- and out-bound calls have there been over the past 30 days?” It eliminates the awkwardness of the “making and receiving” business.
I agree with twickster that the verb tense is the real problem. I suggest that a grammatically correct sentence that conveys what you want to convey would be: “How many phone calls have we made and received, per day, over the past 30 days?” And, obviously, I’m in favor of the commas.
It should be “How many phone calls did we make and receive per day over the past 30 days?”
“are we making” (present progressive tense) does not jive with “over the past 30 days” (clearly in the past, calls for past tense). I’d say that’s pretty clear cut.
I’d forgo the commas because I see no problem with the meaning or flow without them. In fact, I think the flow is better sans commas. Using them isn’t necessarily wrong, but why bother?
“Have we made” would be correct if the time reference included the present, e.g. “How many calls have we made during this 30 day period?” or “How many have we made this week?” or “How many have we made so far?” But the “past 30 days” denotes a time frame that is over, and calls for past tense, not perfect tense. It’s analogous to “How many did we make last week?”
Wow. Glad too see that I’m not the only word nerd here. Thanks for the help. 
Actually, the people who have helped out on the comma question are the punctuation nazis, not the grammar nazis. (Different uniforms, neither of which is to be confused with that of us semantics nazis. We have the cool belt buckles with the “Wie Mit Uns?” logo.)
We gots all kinds o’ nerds here.
The word is “jibe.” 
Or “gibe.”