h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

"It is arrogant to denounce people wrongly of the supposed 'crime' of splitting an infinitive."

OK, this is why I want to write an entry on adverb position. The whole problem is due to adverbs' flexibility in English - they can modify virtually anything. Only the first of Manolan's sentences preserves the right meaning, and I would use the first of Gnomon's sentences. But now look at this (NB the intended meaning is that the problem has not been completely explained):

1. He failed to completely explain the problem.
2. He failed completely to explain the problem.
3. He failed to explain completely the problem.
4. He failed to explain the problem completely.
5. He completely failed to explain the problem.

Sentence 2 is ambiguous, while 4 & 5 have the wrong meaning. This leaves 3, which is probably ambiguous, and certainly awkward.

The word "only" is regularly used in a completely ambiguous way. In singing a song with a choir last Saturday, I was pointed to the printed instruction "Men only sing the verses". I had to have this explained to me.

Examining my mental imagery regarding the group/number distinction, I think part of the reason why
"There is a group of people who believe..."
sounds more natural than
"There is a number of people who believe..."
is that in the former case, I get a much stronger impression of the possibility of a coherent group, distinct from the mass of the population, not only in terms of some particular attribute, but possibly in a spatial sense and it's easy to imagine the sentence both in the sense of
"There *is* a group...", and "*There* is a group..."

In the case of "There is a number of people who beleive...", I don't get the same image of physical separation, and it seems the sentence would be better as "A number of people believe...", which captures the sense that the people may be connected in no other way than their belief, unlike the sense that comes from the word 'group'.
Likewise, "There is a series of paintings that have been collected" can be rephrased as "A series of paintings have been collected"

"There are a number of people at the door" does sound better than "There is..", but possibly part of the reason why it still sounds a bit odd is that it does have low information content - 'number' is very non-specific, whereas terms like group, crowd, gang, horde, etc do give some (albeit vague) impression of the size.

"A number of people are at the door" seems to me to match the vagueness of 'number' with the less direct form of the sentence.

This is a speech to writing problem. In speech, you emphasise the words 'only' and 'verses' to give that meaning. In writing, it is not certain which word or words 'only' is modifying, but this can sometimes be inferred.

I am here. Haven't been for ages, I know. I doubt if anyone has missed me, so you won't mind waiting a couple of days while I catch up on the backlog.

Hi TC! I certainly noticed that you and a number of other people were absent for a while.

I was just about to ask where all the ladies were. The place was staring to reek of testosterone and cigar smoke.
~j~

Jwf, I thought only women could detect the aroma of male hormones.?

Kaeori, my lovely,

Is there no end to your supply of cans of worms?

Gnomon

"There is a group of people who believe" - That sounds OK and is reckoned to be 'good grammar'.

Tsk, tsk.
I think not, Sir.
Logic applied to this gives:
"There is a group which believes." You had, yourself, accepted the singularity. (Singularity not in the sense of "to go boldly ....")

"We may be getting confused by the "who believe". "

I would suggest that we are confusing ourselves by complicating the subject. Why not settle for:
"There is a group ...." or
"There are people ..... "

(Hi, TC. )

Mycroft ! !
Come and rescue us.

Plaguesville,

There is a group of people which is obscuring my view of the eclipse.
There is a group of people who believe the eclipse signals the end of the world.

In the first one, the group is doing the obscuring, so I use "which is". In the second, it is not the group which is doing the believing, it is the individual people who are each believing, no doubt in subtly different, ways that the end of the world is nigh.

So I stand by my original statement:

"There is a group of people who believe ..." is considered good grammar.

Could we not have

"There is a group of people *that* believe ..." ????

... or is this *even* more confusing ?

(or should that be ... "is that even *more* confusing" ?)

Help !!

I'm intrigued not only by the seemingly unlimited supply of cans (infinity ?), but also the (greater than infinity) supply of worms.

Kaeroi, are your cans of worms full, half full or half empty ?

Hello plaguesville! Well, I do like to occasionally wade (ahem) into the "testosterone and cigar smoke" trailing controversies in my wake!

And how nice to hear from TC again!

Jack Naples, I read and re-read your five choices above, and still find no. 4 conveys the right meaning to me! What am I doing wrong?

*Kaeori puffs on her cigar*

Jack, you have completely failed to explain yourself!

Microsoft's Grammar Checker is always chiding me for saying "the box which is on the table" when it claims it should be "the box that is on the table". I wonder is this an Irish usage.

<>

Or "the box, which is on the table", n'est ce pas? I hate officious writing aids, don't you?

Most of the 'authorities' I can find are divided on whether "which" and "that" are interchangeable in these circumstances. Which is my way of saying I can't see an obvious choice between the two.

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

.... maybe it should be "the box, that which is on the table, ..."

I don't think the which/that distinction is an Irish usage, but the phrasal part "I wonder is this..." is.
Another one is the use of the word "abroad" to mean in another room rather than overseas. Most confusing, the putative mother in law talking about there being tea abroad...

So I should have said "Oi wonder is this..."