Resulted or is resuted

Question

Simplicity of Puritan churches resulted/is resulted not from poverty but a desire to avoid wasting resources.Should it be 'resulted' or 'is resulted'?

Usenet · Accepted Answer

[nq:1]Simplicity of Puritan churches resulted/is resulted not from poverty but a desire to avoid wasting resources. Should it be 'resulted' or 'is resulted'?[/nq]
"Is resulted" is definitely wrong. "Resulted" is technically correct, but the sentence is still hard to read. I would prefer to re-word it to avoid the use of the verb "result" altogether. For example,

Puritan churches were simple: not because of poverty, but because of a desire to avoid wasting resources.
Long and tangled sentences are considered to be poor style in English writing. Sometimes you can fix the problem with a little extra punctuation. More often, it's better to turn one long sentence into two or more shorter sentences.

Peter Moylan (Email Removed) http://eepjm.newcastle.edu.au (OS/2 and eCS information and software)

Usenet · Answer

Rush (Email Removed) wrote on 10 Dec 2003:
[nq:1]Simplicity of Puritan churches resulted/is resulted not from poverty but a desire to avoid wasting resources. Should it be 'resulted' or 'is resulted'?[/nq]
It probably should be "The simplicity of Puritan churches was not the result of poverty but of a desire to avoid wasting resources". I don't think this is necessarily true, though. There were other reasons for their simplicity; the Puritans were neither conscious nor crypto environmentalists. They avoided ostentation for theological and not ecological reasons. Remember, the Roman Catholic Church was culturally just the opposite and still is.

Franke: EFL teacher & medical editor.

Usenet · Answer

[nq:2]Simplicity of Puritan churches resulted/is resulted not from poverty but a desire to avoid wasting resources. Should it be 'resulted' or 'is resulted'?[/nq]
[nq:1]"Is resulted" is definitely wrong. "Resulted" is technically correct, but the sentence is still hard to read. I would prefer ... altogether. For example, Puritan churches were simple: not because of poverty, but because of a desire to avoid wasting resources.[/nq]
Not sure about your use of the colon there, cobber.

Adrian

Usenet · Answer

[nq:2]Simplicity of Puritan churches resulted/is resulted not from poverty but a desire to avoid wasting resources.[/nq]
I like Franke's and Peter Moylan's suggestions, but if you want to revise as little as possible, I think it should be "The simplicity of Puritan churches resulted not from poverty but from a desire to avoid wasting resources."
[nq:2]Should it be 'resulted' or 'is resulted'?[/nq]
[nq:1]It probably should be "The simplicity of Puritan churches was not the result of poverty but of a desire to ... ostentation for theological and not ecological reasons. Remember, the Roman Catholic Church was culturally just the opposite and still is.[/nq]
I think the resources are money and work, not natural resources.

Jerry Friedman

Usenet · Answer

[nq:2]Simplicity of Puritan churches resulted/is resulted not from poverty but a desire to avoid wasting resources. Should it be 'resulted' or 'is resulted'?[/nq]
[nq:1]"Is resulted" is definitely wrong. "Resulted" is technically correct, but the sentence is still hard to read.[/nq]
I don't get it. If I flip the sentence around, I can say "Not poverty but a desire to avoid wasting resources resulted the simplicity of Puritan churches." So what results what exactly? Is 'result' a tricky word different from many other verbs?

Usenet · Answer

[nq:2]"Is resulted" is definitely wrong. "Resulted" is technically correct, but the sentence is still hard to read.[/nq]
[nq:1]I don't get it. If I flip the sentence around, I can say "Not poverty but a desire to avoid wasting resources resulted the simplicity of Puritan churches."[/nq]
You have to put an "in" in there "resulted in the simplicity off.."
[nq:1]So what results what exactly?[/nq]
Neither. I'm going to substitute "thrift" for "the desire to avoid wasting resources":
The simplicity resulted from thrift.
The thrift resulted in simplicity.
Also common is "The simplicity was the result of thrift."

Best Donna Richoux

Usenet · Answer

[nq:2]"Is resulted" is definitely wrong. "Resulted" is technically correct, but ... poverty, but because of a desire to avoid wasting resources.[/nq]
[nq:1]Not sure about your use of the colon there, cobber.[/nq]
I am, but I'll concede that I might be a little old-fashioned in this respect. To my mind, the sentence as I wrote it required something stronger than a semicolon, but weaker than a full stop.

There's a tendency nowadays to use colons only in very stylised ways, such as when the author wants to introduce a list. I think that's a pity. Having a choice between colon and semicolon allows us to express nuances that would otherwise be lost.

I gather that the US education systems tend to take a rule-based approach to punctuation, with results that look vaguely Germanic. Australian writers, like British writers, are more inclined to view punctuation as an art form that should not be constrained by rigid rules.

Peter Moylan (Email Removed) http://eepjm.newcastle.edu.au (OS/2 and eCS information and software)

Usenet · Answer

[nq:2]"Is resulted" is definitely wrong. "Resulted" is technically correct, but the sentence is still hard to read.[/nq]
[nq:1]I don't get it. If I flip the sentence around, I can say "Not poverty but a desire to avoid wasting resources resulted the simplicity of Puritan churches." So what results what exactly? Is 'result' a tricky word different from many other verbs?[/nq]
Donna gave a good answer to this. Here is an alternative answer, which might be either easier or harder to understand, depending on what you have been taught about English verbs.
"Result" is an intransitive verb. That is, it cannot have an object. You can say
"Chaos resulted when the fire started."
or you can even have the short sentence
"Chaos resulted."
Here, "chaos" is the subject, and "resulted" is the verb. You may NOT say anything like
"The fire resulted chaos."
because, if you said that, you would be putting the subject (chaos) in the wrong place.
It is, in fact, slightly unusual for an English speaker to use "result" as a simple verb with no qualification. It is more common to use "result" as part of a phrasal verb such as "result from" or "result in". These phrasal verbs can have an object.

Peter Moylan (Email Removed) http://eepjm.newcastle.edu.au (OS/2 and eCS information and software)

Resulted or is resuted

Top answer

Get the Weekly English Kit 📬

Related Questions