Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums

[wanderer]

This is a really difficult sentence for me.

"As is often the case with Johnny, he spent all the money on gambling."

1)Can I write "As the case is often with Johnny, ........."?

2)Why can "the case" be put after "often"?????

Thank .....you. * N times

[lotus]

Hi wanderer,

"Often the case" is an adverbial phrase meaning frequently, invariably or almost all the time. You can't really split it up. You can say, "The case has often been proven that bad behavior comes from bad parenting." This has less to do with frequency than cause and effect. Here, we delineate the case as being "often proven" rather than just being "often the case." We must act on (or modify) the case before we can split it up. "Often the case" used as a phrase for frequency alone, cannot be split up.

I would consider re-writing the sentence as:

As is often the case with Johnny, he spent all his money on gambling.
As expected from Johnny, he spent all his money on gambling.
Johnny spent all his money on gambling as he usually does.
Johnny spent all his money on gambling, as usual.
Johnny gambled and lost all his money again.
Johnny gambled all his money away again.
Johnny gambled and lost again.
Johnny crapped out.

They all basically say the same thing. The less words we use, the better.


--lotus

[wanderer]

Thanks for your help.