Fix my sentence-

Discussion in 'Linguistics' started by John99, Sep 29, 2009.

  1. John99 Banned Banned

    Messages:
    22,046
    example:

    a friend of mines father is a t.v repairman.
     
  2. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  3. draqon Banned Banned

    Messages:
    35,006
    My friend's father is a television repairman.
     
  4. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  5. Dywyddyr Penguinaciously duckalicious. Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    19,252
    Capitalise the initial "a", apostrophise the word "mines", add a full stop (or delete the existing one) to "t.v" and capitalise it.

    A friends of mine's father is a TV (or T.V.) repairman.
     
  6. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  7. John99 Banned Banned

    Messages:
    22,046
    is the other way correct?
     
  8. John99 Banned Banned

    Messages:
    22,046
    Dywyddyr,

    i was wondering if the mine's part was correct. i know about the punctuation.
     
  9. draqon Banned Banned

    Messages:
    35,006
    Answer to Johny! Or forever hold your peace!

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

     
  10. Dywyddyr Penguinaciously duckalicious. Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    19,252
    It's perfectly acceptable (in British English at least).
     
  11. D H Some other guy Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    2,257
    It is grammatically correct, but it is a bit clumsy and potentially confusing because mine is already possessive.
     
  12. Dywyddyr Penguinaciously duckalicious. Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    19,252
    Pfft a perfectly cromulous usage here...

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!


    Actually I have used it myself on numerous occasions.
     
  13. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

    Messages:
    24,690
    It's acceptable in speech. You're very unlikely to encounter that construction in writing, except as colloquial dialog within quotation marks. When writing, people will usually either:
    • Shorten it to "my friend's father" or "a friend's father," or...
    • Straighten out the grammar to "the father of a friend of mine" or "the father of one of my friends."
    It was a reasonable hypothesis since your punctuation here is pretty sloppy, for example, your consistent failure to capitalize the pronoun "I" and the first word in your sentences.

    Punctuation errors slow the reader down. Not taking the little bit of time you need to learn the location of your Shift key by touch multiplies the impact by causing everyone who reads your writing to waste their own time. In other words, it's rude.
     
  14. John99 Banned Banned

    Messages:
    22,046
    i have a disability and it is easier for me to write and read with no punctuation.
     
  15. Dywyddyr Penguinaciously duckalicious. Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    19,252
    Regardless, when you post the comment "Fix my sentence" without specifying which errors you're aware of and which you aren't it leaves the whole thing open to to scrutiny and correction.
    And the comment "i know about the punctuation" was also particularly ingenuous, since most of the corrections, including the looked-for one, was punctuation.
     

Share This Page