"is is"

[David M. Robertson]

Wouldn't it be better to replace the "is is" with "was was"? But "is was" might be OK as well.
Either way, it might be stylistically better to make it "I thought that a requirement for
joining this list was knowing who Tartaglia was." (To speak for myself, I didn't know who
Tartaglia was until just a few minutes ago.)

   Snake

Mark_Mandel at DRAGONSYS.COM wrote:

> James Landau writes:
>
> >>>>>
> P.S.  On a different topic.  I once perpetrated the following sentence: [In
> reference to the Historia Matematica mailing list] "I thought that knowing
> who Tartaglia is is a requirement for joining this list".  [Tartaglia was a
> Medieval Italian mathematician.]  Is this sentence grammatical?  If so, then
> it is possible to have the word "is" twice in a row without it having to be
> in quotes.  However, it must be admitted that in response to that sentence I
> received an e-mail from Germany politely requesting me to translate it into
> English.
> <<<<<
>
> IMHO, grammatical beyond question, although prosodically somewhat challenging to the reader.
>
> -- Mark A. Mandel