Job Discussion Forums

[geaaronson]

Despite the syntactical awkwardness of this sentence I would like to know if it`s grammatically incorrect. I have been in communication with a literary editor and she made the comment that it was incorrect grammar.

I agree it woulld have been better written as �I have not yet seen the story on the web�but can anyone tell me where I have erred in writing the following sentence.

�I have not seen the story on line as of yet.�

[naturegirl321]

online should be one word. Other than that is looks ok, maybe get rid of "as of"

[MO39]

I agree with naturegirl; "on line" should be one word, and "as of yet" seems to me a bit overdone - "yet" is enough in my style book. What do others think?

[johnslat]

Yes and yes - online and drop the "as of."

[jillford64]

I believe the sentence is grammatically correct. "Online" is a matter of spelling and dropping the "as of" is a matter of style not of grammar.

[johnslat]

Yes, it is "grammatically correct", but the "as of yet" is windy and pretentious and "on line" is an incorrect spelling.

[basiltherat]

I agree. The use of 'as of' is redundant. Sounds like the kind of expression a British politician might use when speaking to the public on BBC TV; trying to 'impress' us all with his/her total lack of eloquence and brevity.

best
basil

[arioch36]

Is that a first, or what? Six responses all in agreement, literally a miracle

[ouyang]

This sentence is not grammatically incorrect. The writing style is incorrect. The so-called spelling error "on line" is a perfectecly acceptable prepositional phrase. Your literary editor is telling you that you have made an error in not communicating your knowledge that the word "online" is now recognized. It was a buzzword ten years ago, for crying out loud. How dare you ignore it.

Your use of another prepostional phrase as an adverb is yet another style faux paus. The phrase "as of" may be a common compound time preposition. It's more often used with noun objects, e.g. "as of yesterday", and you aren't the first to follow it with the adverb "yet". Both adverbs and adjectives can, in fact, form the objects of prepositions, e.g. "until recently". However, your use of of this unecessary phrase confirms that you are doofus who passed up a chance to use a buzzword.

We tend to overlook grammatical and true spelling errors; just look at how many are made on this forum. Style errors are much more serious. Perhaps, you should give up writing and leave it to people who believe that style rules constitute grammatical principles.

[johnslat]

Dear ouyang
Online isn't on line:

"online
1line (noun)

Main Entry:
on�line
Pronunciation:
\ˈȯn-ˈlīn, ˈ�n-ˈlīn\
Function:
adjective
Date:
1950
: connected to, served by, or available through a system and especially a computer or telecommunications system (as the Internet) <an online database> ; also : done while connected to such a system <online shopping>
� online adverb

And by the way, when I entered it in the dictionary search, I entered it as:

on line.

Try Googling "on line" and see what you get.

Regards,
John

[ouyang]

[Stephen Jones]

[stillnosheep]

as of yet is wrong.

as of now would be ok

yet would be ok

but as of yet makes no sense and is wrong.

[johnslat]

Dear stillnosheep,

Wrong? Not as of yet:

AS (OF) YET
Jack Hoeksema

"The English expression as (of) yet is a negative-polarity item with properties that have not been isolated before in the literature on polarity sensitivity. Just like its main ingredient, the adverb yet, it is an adverb of temporal perspective (cf. K�nig 1977,Abraham 1980, Vandeweghe 1983, Nerbonne 1983, L�bner 1989, and Van Baar 1992 for discussions of this class of adverbs in German, Dutch and English). And just like yet, it is sensitive to the quantificational structure of the sentence in which it occurs. Wemay construct paradigms where the presence or absence of a negative quantifier isshown to have a direct effect on the acceptability of as (of) yet:

(1)
a. As of yet, there has been no answer from the Klingons.
b. *As of yet, there has been an answer from the Klingons.
c. As of yet, I haven't read more than three books on chess.
d. *As of yet, I haven't read less than three books on chess.
e. As of yet, few workers have filled out the forms

for more, please use this link:

http://www.let.rug.nl/~hoeksema/asofyet.pdf

Wrong - no. Just "windy and pretentious."

Regards,
John

[stillnosheep]

Used link.

Author considers "I have read less than three books on ufo's yet." to be a perfectly acceptable sentence.

'Nuff said.

Also note: "The data were taken mainly from two sources: a large corpus of texts posted on the internet (about 11 million words), and articles from the Wall Street Journal"

Regards,
Steve