Two sentences which are baffling me....

Question

1. 'There are 4 numbers. Their total when added together is 2. When their cubed forms are

added, they add up to 8.'

Is this sentence grammatically correct? If it's not, how can I improve it?

2. 'To the economist business try to maximise profits'

I know that this sentence is grammatically wrong, but I'm not sure about how I should

improve it.

Thank you all and have a beautiful day.

MrPedantic · Accepted Answer

Hello JKB

#1 is grammatical, but a little loose. Maybe:

1. There are 4 numbers. They add up to 2. Their cubes add up to 8.

I'm not quite sure what the meaning is, with #2; but maybe:

2. To the economist, business is about maximising profits.

MrP

JKBelieve · Answer

This part of the sentence....'businesses try to maximise profits'

Would it be better if I wrote 'businesses try to maximise their profits'

would that be better? Oh and can u explain when I can and can not eliminate possive

pronouns like their, our, etc (are these called possesive pronouns?)?

You've been most helpful thank you very much....

I'm really sorry if my questions seem quite unorganized...........

MrPedantic · Answer

That's ok, JK. Yes, you could say:

'Businesses try to maximise their profits.'

I'm not sure how you'd add 'economist' to that, though.

{My, your, their, our, his, her, its} are possessive determiners. These act like adjectives: 'my book', etc.

{mine, yours, theirs, ours, his, hers, its} are possessive pronouns. These act like nouns: 'Whose is that book?' 'It's mine.'

You use possessive determiners when you need to specify who owns an object. If ownership has been established, you can use other determiners:

'I opened my grammar book. The book was blue, with black letters on the cover. "This is a strange book," I thought, as I opened it. "You can't read it unless you already know what it says."

At that moment my brother came in. His grammar book was red, with yellow stripes. The two books lay side by side on the table. My book was more stylish than my brother's book; but his book had more interesting examples of modal verbs.'

I've put the determiners in bold. As you can see, once ownership has been established, other determiners can be used, till we need to distinguish again ('his grammar book was red...).

MrP

Mister Micawber · Answer

What's the answer to (1), JK? I can solve the problem for 3 numbers, but not for 4 numbers.

PS: Aha! A little bird just told me that one of the numbers is zero-- I didn't know this was a trick question.

JKBelieve · Answer

Neither did I Mister Micawber..........

oh and MrP thank you very very much. So both sentences would be alright :

1. businesses try to maximise profits

2. businesses try to maximise their profits

but (1) seems a little vague..........to me....well thanx anyway

Two sentences which are baffling me....

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