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Anonymous Posted 21 years ago
Grammar
contractions
I'm a grammar junkie, and there is one thing that is bothering me with contractions. The other night I was making the bed and said: 'Why don't the covers stay on?' and I thought about it and figured that had to be improper grammar because the sentence really says: 'Why do not the covers stay on?' Which to me doesn't make sense. But my boyfriend said that I was actually correct because you don't have to break the sentence down like that...and when I said 'Why don't the covers stay on?' the contraction is actually broken into separate words throughout the sentence therefore he interpreted the sentence as: 'Why do the covers not stay on?' and he said that my original sentence was correct. I know other ways I could have said it, but what I want to know is if this is proper or not.
Top answer
' This is a very old-fashioned way of speaking. You could say it if you wanted to, today, and it wouldn't be wrong. But we don't say that, as you know.
- ' This is a very old-fashioned way of speaking.
- You could say it if you wanted to, today, and it wouldn't be wrong.
- But we don't say that, as you know.
- ' .
- Language and grammar change, and the way we speak today comes from the way we spoke in earlier times.
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1 Answers
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Hi,
'Why do not the covers stay on?' This is a very old-fashioned way of speaking. You could say it if you wanted to, today, and it wouldn't be wrong. But we don't say that, as you know. However, we still use the contracted form 'Why don't ....'.
Language and grammar change, and the way we speak today comes
'Why do not the covers stay on?' This is a very old-fashioned way of speaking. You could say it if you wanted to, today, and it wouldn't be wrong. But we don't say that, as you know. However, we still use the contracted form 'Why don't ....'.
Language and grammar change, and the way we speak today comes
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