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Anonymous Posted 10 years ago
Grammar

'that is' at the end of a sentence.

"We take them for granted. Rocket launches that is."

Hi, I'm looking over some text that my colleague has written for a fairly informal blog. He is going for a conversational style. Something doesn't seem quite right to me in the two sentences at the top of the post. Can anyone comment?

Thanks,

Tom
  

Top answer

It's OK, but I would consider putting a comma after "launches". This kind of pattern really stems from conversation, in the case when you realise after the first sentence that your audience might not know what "them" refers to, so you say "Rocket launches that is" to clarify. Obviously in writing you have the opportunity to go back and actually change "them" to "rocket launches", but if you are trying to achieve a chatty or conversational style then you might deliberately keep it as an afterthought.

— GPY

  • It's OK, but I would consider putting a comma after "launches".
  • This kind of pattern really stems from conversation, in the case when you realise after the first sentence that your audience might not know what "them" refers to, so you say "Rocket launches that is" to clarify.
  • Obviously in writing you have the opportunity to go back and actually change "them" to "rocket launches", but if you are trying to achieve a chatty or conversational style then you might deliberately keep it as an afterthought.
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1 Answers
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It's OK, but I would consider putting a comma after "launches".

This kind of pattern really stems from conversation, in the case when you realise after the first sentence that your audience might not know what "them" refers to, so you say "Rocket launches that is" to clarify. Obviously in writing you have the opportunity to go back and actually change "them" to "rocket launches", but if y
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