Appropriate adjective and adverb

All applications are subject to the bank’s final decision, at its absolute discretion. The bank shall be entitled to reject any such application(s) at any time and from time to time without reason(s) assigning therefore and without liability to the Applicants.

The above two adjoining sentences have been picked up from a bank’s website. Anyone carefully reading them will find that the participle “assigning” and the adverb “therefore” do not appear to have been appropriately used in the second sentence. The former should have been “assigned” and the latter, “therefor”.

Hence, the second sentence should read, “The bank shall be entitled to reject any such application(s) at any time and from time to time without reason(s) assigned therefor and without liability to the Applicants.”

Subject /verb disagreement

When one constructs any sentence with its subject placed far away from its verb, one must be careful to ensure that the subject and the verb must agree.

Just check the following sentence and see if anything is wrong with the sentence taken from a column in a popular national English daily.

Blaming your parents and showing them your foul moods and tantrums just shows your immaturity and imbecility.

'Blaming' and 'showing' are two verbal nouns (gerunds) which are joined by 'and'.

Since the rules of grammar require that subjects joined by 'and' be matched with plural verbs, the sentence in question should have been "Blaming your parents and showing them your foul moods and tantrums just show your immaturity and imbecility."

Awkward sentences?

A businessman, his wife and two children had come onboard at 1.20pm yesterday and were congratulated by the captain.

While fares are no doubt cheaper, it is actually subsided by the number of people who bought tickets way in advance because they are cheap.


The above sentences appear in two separate news reports of a popular national English daily.

In the first sentence, an act (come) is said to have been completed at a given time (1.20pm yesterday) in the past and that has necessitated the use of a simple past tense instead of a past perfect tense. Consequently, the sentence should have been "A businessman, his wife and two children came onboard at 1.20pm yesterday and were congratulated by the captain."

In the second sentence, the word 'subsided' should apparently be 'subsidized' and the 'it' should be 'they' to be consistent. The whole sentence, therefore, should have been "While fares are no doubt cheaper, they are actually subsidized by the number of people who bought tickets way in advance because they are cheap."

A conjunction is required to join two sentences (or clauses) together

In the movie, the wizard reacts to the scarecrow's desire for a brain by explaining that the brain is actually a very mediocre commodity every living creature has one.

The above sentence is taken from an article published by a popular national English daily.

I call it a sentence because it begins with a capital letter and ends with a full stop. However, if one carefully examines it, one will discover that it actually contains two sentences (or two noun clauses) that need to be joined together by means of a conjunction.

Hence, the sentence in question should have been "In the movie, the wizard reacts to the scarecrow's desire for a brain by explaining that the brain is actually a very mediocre commodity and every living creature has one. "

“Been” for “being”

The sentence below is taken from a letter written by apparently a medical doctor and published by a popular English daily.

It is the experience of many private physicians that often such patients are afraid to return the excess or unused medicine for fear of been penalised.

Obviously “for fear of been penalised” should have been “for fear of being penalised”.

Such anomaly seems to occur quite frequently apart from this and those other cases mentioned in my earlier posting herein on February 4, 2008.