Tenses and grammar

Question

Could anyone tell which of these sentences are gramatically correct-"There had been so many errors in the system, which i completely overlooked." "there were so many errors in the system, which i had completely overlooked." "there were so many errors in the system, which i completely overlooked."Thanks

CalifJim · Accepted Answer

Your sentences need a little help. The following are correct.

There were a lot of errors in the system which I (had) completely overlooked.
There had been a lot of errors in the system which I (had) completely overlooked.

1) 'had' is optional where shown in parentheses.
2) Use 'so (many)' only with a consequent 'that' clause:

There were so many errors that I had to spend hours correcting them.

3) In an affirmative sentence 'a lot of' is more idiomatic than 'many', but both are grammatical, so it's not wrong to replace 'a lot of' with 'many' in the two sentences I gave you above if you wish.
4) There should not be a comma before 'which' because the which clause tells us something more about the errors. It's not just a parenthetical remark about the errors.
5) The first person singular pronoun is always written as a capital letter, I, never i.

CJ

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