Was that he was guilty obvious?

Douglas G. Wilson douglas at NB.NET
Wed Jan 12 19:15:52 UTC 2011


On 1/12/2011 2:09 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society<ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter<wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Was that he was guilty obvious?
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Grammatical but clumsy. If I'd written it, I'd revise it.
>
> JL
>
> On Wed, Jan 12, 2011 at 10:01 AM, Randy Alexander
> <strangeguitars at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society<ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Randy Alexander<strangeguitars at GMAIL.COM>
>> Subject:      Was that he was guilty obvious?
>>
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> "Was that he was guilty obvious?"
>>
>> Do you find the above sentence grammatical or ungrammatical?
--

I agree. Grammatical but suboptimal.

-- Doug Wilson

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