"Let me know when is a good time to call you"

Question

I wanted to use the phrase "Let me know when is a good time to call you" in a letter, but then thought that the grammatically correct form should be "Let me know when a good time to call you is". However, a quick Google check revealed that the exact phrase "let me know when is a good time to call you" returns 816 000 entries, whereas the exact phrase "let me know when a good time to call you is" returns zero entries. So is "Let me know when is a good time to call you" actually correct? If it isn't, why isn't anyone using the correct form? I know you can rephrase it (e.g. "Please let me know when I can call you") but there must be a correct way to use the above phrase too.
Your advice is appreciated!

Mister Micawber · Accepted Answer

AnonymousYour advice is appreciated!

Did you try 'Let me know when it is / it's a good time to call you'?

Anonymous · Answer

Here are the Google hits numbers for these:
"Let me know when it is a good time to call you" - 8 hits
"Let me know when it's a good time to call you" - 6 hits
"Let me know when is a good time to call you" - 29 hits
Note that the 816 000 hits I had quoted before were actually for "Let me know what is a good time to call you".

Now, a very important note: the last phrase ("Let me know when is a good time to call you") showed "approximately 20 000 results" on the top of the page. However when I started checking those, there was nothing beyond page 3, and it turned out that there are actually only 29 entries containing that exact phrase.
Even more shockingly, when I started checking the supposed 817 000 hits for "Let me know what is a good time to call you" (a thousand more than just a couple of minutes ago) I didn't get beyond page 2 and a total of 12 hits (and on one of these 12 pages I didn't actually find this phrase).
OK, so I learned an important lesson: reported numbers of Google search results are egregiously unreliable!
Nevertheless, we are still left with the question: which of the following is grammatically correct?
"Let me know when [or what] is a good time to call you"
"Let me know when [or what] a good time to call you is"
"Let me know when it is a good time to call you"
I would appreciate your feedback!

Mister Micawber · Answer

Anonymous so I learned an important lesson: reported numbers of Google search results are egregiously unreliable!

Absolutely—or at least for long word strings. For shorter phrases or single terms, try FrazeIt ( http://fraze.it ) or a corpus ( http://corpus.byu.edu )

Anonymous, we are still left with the question: which of the following is grammatically correct?

They are all common and accepted.

Anonymous · Answer

Thanks for the links, I have bookmarked them!
Unfortunately, neither FrazeIt, nor any of the corpora I tried returned any hits for any of the above phrases or any usefully shortened versions thereof.
So for longer phrases like these, search engines still seem to be better suited, as at least with those you find something.
By the way I found out that search engines other than Google seem to list much smaller numbers of hits for these phrases, but these numbers are much closer to the actual numbers of hits found. Among the engines I tried Bing worked best. There I found a relatively similar number of hits for "let me know when is a good time " and "let me know when a good time " (with "is" or "would be" coming later in the sentence, e.g. "Let me know when a good time to meet with you would be").
So, to come back once again to the original question: which of the forms listed in my previous post is the grammatically correct one? I now tend to think that it is "Let me know when a good time to call is". Is this right?

CalifJim · Answer

Anonymous"Let me know when [a good time to call] [is]". Is this right?

It is correct not to invert subject and verb (as bracketed above) in an indirect question. This is "the rule".
However, when the subject is a "heavy phrase" (has lots of words), it is customary to invert, giving

Let me know when is a good time to call.

Writers who don't like the resulting sentence usually rephrase.

CJ

Anonymous · Answer

Kindly let me know a good time to speak to you.

Anonymous · Answer

please let me know a good time to talk to you after 12 pm

"Let me know when is a good time to call you"

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