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Joyous Posted 21 years ago
Grammar

Linking verbs and phrases

0 Hi, 02br
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00I am a Copy Editor working on a document. What do you think of this sentence: 02br
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00"The team will strategize about what we collectively feel are the appropriate markups to submit with this bid, based on the perceived competition, the types of measures proposed, and our understanding of the scope of services the City expects for each task." 02br
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00Besides being unbearably long (it is technical language for an engineering proposal), I would have moved the "are" after "bid." I thought "what we collectively feel the appropriate markups to submit with this bid" was one phrase that needed to stay together. But my boss thought it was wrong. 02br
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00Is there a grammatical rule for this situation? Linking verbs shouldn't be at the ends of sentences, but the "are" would be at the end of a phrase in my version. Is the "are" part of a phrase? 02br
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00Would you say (1) "I thought about what was the appropriate thing to wear, based on the weather" or (2) "I thought about what the appropriate thing to wear was, based on the weather"? 02br
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00(2) sounds better to me. 02br
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00If there are links to rules for this situation, I'll take them. 0-
  

Top answer

0 Hello Joyous 02br 02br 00I'm a learner from Japan and I have pondered upon your question for a while. 02br 02br 00As for your last question, probably I would say like : "I thought about what was appropriate to wear, considering the current weather condition". To me, the expression "based on ~" sounds a bit too formal compared with the collocation "think about".

— Paco2004

  • 0 Hello Joyous 02br 02br 00I'm a learner from Japan and I have pondered upon your question for a while.
  • 02br 02br 00As for your last question, probably I would say like : "I thought about what was appropriate to wear, considering the current weather condition".
  • To me, the expression "based on ~" sounds a bit too formal compared with the collocation "think about".
  • 02br 02br 00As for your first question, I still cannot get what you want to say by the sentence exactly.
  • Is it saying like: "The team will strategize about the mark-ups that we, as an organization, can consider adequate to put into the bid from the standpoint of perceived competition, etc"?
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8 Answers
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0 Hello Joyous 02br
02br
00I'm a learner from Japan and I have pondered upon your question for a while. 02br
02br
00As for your last question, probably I would say like : "I thought about what was appropriate to wear, considering the current weather condition". To me, the expression "based on ~" sounds a bit too formal compared with the collocation "think
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0Hello Joyous. Welcome to English Forums. (You don't sound too joyous at the moment, though.) 02br
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00The short answer is: grammatically speaking, the 'are' can go at either end. 02br
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00Because, as you say, the clause, '01i00what... (are) the appropriate markups to submit with this bid (are)02i00' is so long,
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0 Mr. Micawber, 02br
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00Thank you very much for your help. I posted this question in several forums and yours is the most coherent response I have received. 02br
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00Despite a Master's in English and years of teaching English (language) abroad and literature here, this one threw me. I'm sure I'll be back as this new job is giving me some unique lan
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0 To Mister Micawber, 02br
02br
00What is the grammatical difference(if any) between the following two sentences? Thanks. 02br
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00a) "The team will strategize about what we collectively feel ARE the appropriate markups to submit with this bid, based on the perceived competition, the types of measures proposed, and our understanding of the scope of serv
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0 Hello guys 02br
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00Although it's not my business to criticize sentences written by other English learners, I think the original text is not so good a business writing. First of all, what I cannot get there is the phrase "submit the appropriate markups with the bid". I took this text is saying something about price decision and I interpreted this 'markups' as some amount
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0 Just FYI 02br
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00I did not intend for this sentence to be analyzed in such depth; I provided it only to ask my question about the verb. Mr. Micawber answered my question beautifully, which tells me that one did not need to know the full context to understand what I was asking. 02br
02br
00The "based on" modifies the entire clause "what we collectivel
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0 To joyous, 02br
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00Re: "The team will strategize about what we collectively feel are the appropriate markups to submit with this bid, based on the perceived competition, the types of measures proposed, and our understanding of the scope of services the City expects for each task." 02br
02br
00Your above sentence can be re-written as:- 02br

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0 As I have one and half decades' experience of working as an engineer for a maker of sewage treatment plants, I know something about what bidding is like. In Japanese bidding customs for construction of public facilities, markups are usually given as parts of the total bidding price, not excluded from it. 02br
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00As for the phrase "we collectively feel", I take it as a
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