19 September 2014

PREVIOUS GRAMMAR QUESTION

Seeing that starbucks’ opens at safeway stores now and they had also opened at many book stores’;  I wonder if it would now loose customer’s from their regular outlets.

1. Capitalization: 

Both Starbucks and Safeway are proper nouns, so they must be capitalized.

2. Singular or plural: 

Company names are usually collective nouns and are usually treated as singular nouns even when they end in “s”, so the verbs and pronouns should also be in the singular form in order to have proper "subject-verb agreement".

3. Apostrophe error:

"Starbucks", "book stores" and "customers" are not being used in the possessive, so they should not have an apostrophe. 

As an aside, note the difference between "Starbucks" and "stores": "Starbucks" always has an "s" at the end, while "stores" only has an "s" because it is being used in the plural. As a result, if we were to use "Starbucks" in the possessive, we would add the apostrophe and the "s" as we usually do (e.g. "Starbucks's new CEO"). But if we were to use "stores" in the possessive, we would just the apostrophe and not the extra "s" (e.g. "The book stores' employees").

4. Verb form: 

Using “opens” in the simple present tense indicates a habitual action. Instead, we probably want to describe something that began in the past and continues in the present; for that, we should use the present perfect tense ("has opened") or the verb "is" + the predicate adjective "open", or perhaps even the present progressive tense ("is opening").

5. Verb tense: 

Try to be consistent with the verb tense. If you use the present perfect ("has opened”) then you should continue using it later in the sentence instead of switching to the past perfect ("had opened").

6. Conditional clauses: 

The word "if" introduces a conditional clause. Whenever the main clause uses the simple present tense, the conditional clause should use the simple future tense ("will" + main verb).

7. Word confusion: 

Try not to confuse the  verb is "lose" with the adjective "loose".

8. Punctuation: 

A semicolon divides two independent clauses. In this case, the first clause is a dependent one, so we need to use a comma instead of the semicolon.

Possible solution

Seeing that Starbucks has opened at Safeway stores and they have also opened at many bookstores, I wonder if they will now lose customers from their regular outlets.

3 comments:

Olena140 said...

Michael,

I have a follow up question.

You posted a possible solution: "Seeing that Starbucks has opened at Safeway stores and they have also opened at many bookstores, I wonder if they will now lose customers from their regular outlets."

The last part of the sentence is in plural: I wonder if they will now lose customers from their regular outlets

Would it be a mistake to use singular tense here?

"Seeing that Starbucks has opened at Safeway stores and they have also opened at many bookstores, I wonder if it (Starbucks) will now lose customers from its (Starbucks's) regular outlets."

Michael said...

Good question, Olena.

Using "they" is common way to refer to a business or institution -- even when its name doesn't appear to be plural -- though, strictly speaking, I think you are right to prefer the singular.

Here is a typical example:

"Unperturbed, Microsoft stuck to their guns (or should that be letters) and released XP, which was such a success that there was legitimate anger among its faithful users when Microsoft announced they would no longer be offering support for XP in April this year – 12 years after it was released."

[http://www.techly.com.au/2014/10/02/microsoft-skip-windows-9/#]

There is a good discussion about this here:

http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=2123571

Olena140 said...

Thank you, Michael.

I have other questions about the points and what gives me what. Can I ask them here? Or should I use some email address for that?