From a lawyer's advertising:There's nothing wrong with this one!If you or someone you love is suffering from mesothelioma – or has died as a result of it – contact us today for a free evaluation of your case.
Did you want "are suffering" and "have died"? That would have been right with and, but it's wrong with or , because the conjunction or does not add the two parts together (as and does). Therefore, when either or or its negative version nor is used, and both parts of the subject are singular, the verb is singular. When one part is singular (or is "I") and the other is plural (or is "you"), the verb agrees with whichever part is closer to it. Yes, you finally get to use 'agreement by the nearest'!
So, "you or a loved one is", "you or John is", "you or I am" and "John or you are". Whether the subject comes before or after the verb doesn't matter; the proximity determines the number. (After the verb? Yes, as in questions, where are would be right here: "Are you or someone you love suffering?")
Quick Quiz 29:This one is somewhat similar to the last quiz, in that it involves negation, which is often syntactically complicated. That one was "has yet to comment"; this one is "doesn't just grow" - and it's complicated by that "just". "Just" is a particle, an adverb-like word that changes the meaning rather drastically (compare with a true adverb such as "quickly"). Particles, like adverbs, modify the word they're next to: "it just grows on trees" means something different than "it grows just on trees" (the former means either that it grows without any effort on anyone's part, or that it only grows on trees and doesn't do anything else there).From a "Whole grain Tiger Power cereal" commercial:The mother monkey says: "I think his muscles are growing, but protein? It doesn't just grow on trees around here."
Presumably the reverse of momma monkey's statement would be "it just grows on trees around here", meaning that no effort was required to obtain protein for her child, as it was readily to hand, growing on the trees. But she probably wants to say the opposite - that protein can't be readily had because it doesn't grow on the trees - and that's not what she actually says. What she says is that growing on trees around here is only one of the things protein does.
It's that pesky 'not'. And the fact that in English, all lexical verbs (that is, all verbs other than "be" and modals such as "could") are made negative by using an auxillary verb "do" - angels speaking modern English would say "don't fear" instead of "fear not", and we say "I don't know" not "I know not". So, in the statement from the commercial the "not" is negating the whole phrase "just grows on trees", not merely the "grows" part. Or, to put it another way, the "just" is modifying "grows", not "doesn't grow".
What momma monkey ought to be saying is, "Protein? It just doesn't grow on trees around here."
All adverb placement is important, but particle placement is crucially so. Look at these:
There's a difference -- and usually a major difference (4 and 5 are close, though not identical) -- in the meanings of these sentences.
- Just it doesn't grow on trees around here.
- It just doesn't grow on trees around here.
- It doesn't just grow on trees around here.
- It doesn't grow just on trees around here.
- It doesn't grow on just trees around here.
- It doesn't grow on trees just around here.
- It doesn't grow on trees around just here.
When using particles (just, only, even and so on), place them carefully. Know what you mean to say - and say it.
Quick Quiz 28:from ESPN Sports Center:A couple of problems with this one. First, despite the supposed prohibition on "double negatives", Standard English couples "neither" with "nor", not "or" - which goes with "either".Neither Robinson or his team has yet to comment.
Both "neither" and "nor" can be used alone, of course, though "nor" needs another negative. "Nor" (meaning 'not or') is one of the few negatives (still) allowed to function as a reinforcer in a sentence and is generally found with another negative - as "Robinson has not commented, nor has his team."
"Neither" (meaning 'not either (of)') can stand alone, being all the negative a sentence needs: "Neither (of them) has commented." (Note, too, that "neither" is normally restricted to two things, with "none" seving for more than two - or the negative put elsewhere, as "None of Robinson, his team, nor the owner have commented" or "Robinson, his team, and the owner have not commented.")
So that's the first thing - the "neither - or" construction. But changing "or" to "nor" doesn't help much: "Neither Robinson nor his team has yet to comment" sounds as bad.
The other problem is that "yet". There are constructions in which it can mean "still" - things like "and for all I know, he is there yet". Mostly, though, it means pretty much the opposite of "still" - which makes the question "is he doing it yet?" ambiguous for some speakers. When coupled with "have + infinitive", however, it means that the action of the verb has not happened - though it is expected to.
"I have yet to read the book" = "I have not read the book yet" = "I have not read the book but I will read it"
Now we get into what makes this sentence so deeply weird. "Yet" has what's called negative scope. "They have yet to comment" means "they have not commented so far". So we have two negative scope items here - and that's not the same as the typical 'double' which is really 'intensifying'. That "neither have yet to comment" is the same as "neither have not commented so far." And that isn't English.
Robinson and his team have yet to comment.Note, please, that the versatile word "yet" can function in this sentence as long as "comment" is not in the infinitive. "They haven't yet commented, they haven't commented yet, neither has yet commented": all of these work.
Neither Robinson nor his team has commented so far.
Neither Robinson nor his team has commented yet.
From a website on collie genetics:It is almost impossible, for instance to find a collie which is both free of eye defects and the genes which cause them.Two things:
First, and least important, is a punctuation error: there should be another comma after "for instance". That's an adverbial, modifying the following clause, not part of either clause. So it should be set off by two commas.The second thing is that "both" has been misplaced. Like "and" (and other conjunctions), "both" links like things - in this case, both things are what the collie "is". The sentence is saying that it is almost impossible to find a collie which is two things: (1) free of eye defects, and (2) the genes which cause them.
What the writer wanted was to put the "both" after "free of" - it is almost impossible to find a collie which is free of two things: (1) eye defects) and (2) the genes which cause them.
It's true that the impossibility of a collie "being" genes makes this sentence 'just' awkward. But suppose this person wanted to find a collie that had neither bad eyes nor the (to some) undesirable merle coloring. If she wrote, "I want to find a collie that is both free of eye defects and merle", then she is saying the opposite of what she wants. (Well, nearly the opposite: she said she wants a merle collie that's free of eye defects, not a merle with bad eyes.) What she would need to write is: "I want to find a collie which is free of both eye defects and merle."
The thing to remember is: "both" links the two things that follow it, and relates them in the same way the what comes before it. X is both Y and Z = X is Y and X is Z. X is free of both Y and Z = X is free of Y and X is free of Z. (Note: "neither" does the same thing, only negatively: X is neither Y nor Z = X is not Y and X is not Z.
From a contract for buying a purebred dog:I'm quite sure the Buyer does agree not to be given away, destroyed, or relinqushed to a pound. I'm also fairly sure that it's the dog the Seller wanted to get that agreement on. But that's not what the contract says.Buyer agrees that if at any time the buyer wishes to destroy or give away the dog, Buyer will return dog to Seller and will not be given away, destroyed, or relinquished to a pound or shelter.
The problem here is that we have an "and" joining two clauses: "will return" and "will not be given away". Both of them have the same subject, "Buyer" - that's the way that "and" works. When any parts of a clause following "and" are omitted, they must be the same as in the clause that came before. Or, another way to say it, "and" joins like things. You can only leave out things that are the same.
There are a number of ways this sentence could be fixed. The simplest is to insert "dog" and make two complete sentences, with nothing left out:
Buyer agrees that if at any time the buyer wishes to destroy or give away the dog, Buyer will return dog to Seller and dog will not be given away, destroyed, or relinquished to a pound or shelter.Another is to make both clauses active voice:Buyer agrees that if at any time the buyer wishes to destroy or give away the dog, Buyer will return dog to Seller and not give dog away, destroy it, or relinquish it to a pound or shelter.That's a bit more wordy, and has the object (dog/it) repeated three times, which clearly was what the author wanted to avoid. The problem with her solution was that she changed voice, making the object the subject (give dog away = dog is given away). But when the clauses are linked with "and", and the subject isn't stated in the passive clause, it simply can't be the object of the active one. "And" requires the same subject in the second, where it's not said, as in the first, where it is.So another way to handle this would be
Buyer agrees that if at any time the buyer wishes to destroy or give away the dog, dog will be returned to Seller and will not be given away, destroyed, or relinquished to a pound or shelter.
Two different home owners on HGTV's shows "Designers' Challenge" and "Curb Appeal", broadcast the same night:I think this is caused by hypercorrection - the phenomenon of correcting too far, so that you create a whole new error. Normally one uses an adverb to modify a verb. But this isn't "normally"."The narrow railing looks way too thinly there."
"Look how wonderfully that looks."
"Looks" in both of these sentences is not an action verb. It's a linking verb: "thin" isn't describing how the railing looks, in the sense of the manner in which the railing visually observes the world; it's describing what the railing's appearance is like to those observing it. What does it look like? It's thin. Not, it's thinly.
Same thing goes for "that", whatever it was (I think it was a topiary). It looks wonderful.
"Looks" is a linking verb. It links the subject noun (or pronoun) with a predicate adjective describing it. It breaks down like this:
The thin railing = the railing is thin = the railing looks thinOther linking verbs include "is, seems, appears, becomes, turns" and "grows". Of course, some of these, such as "looks" or "turns" can be intransitive verbs, and "grows" can be a transitive verb, too, as in "he looks up at the sky; she turns the hands of the clock", or "they grow wheat". In those cases, you would use adverbs: "he looks deeply into the sky, she turns the hands quickly, they grow wheat profitably".
Wonderful that = that is wonderful = that looks wonderful
What you have to look at is what is the verb doing? If it's describing an action the subject is taking, use an adverb to modify the verb. If, on the other hand, it's describing the subject by linking it to the following word, that word should be an adjective.
Quick Quiz 24:
From a "Newsweek" article subtitle:
It was clear that [Saddam] was a threat, and the only way to counter him was to act quickly. Unfortunately, there wasn't any WMD.
WMD stands for "weapons of mass destruction". That's plural. You don't say "The WMD is hidden," do you? Nope, it's "The WMD are hidden." So it should be "There weren't any WMD."Remember: you use "was" with singular nouns, or with 'mass' nouns - things like snow, or water, that can't be counted but are treated like a big mass or lump. Although the destruction may be mass, the weapons themselves can be counted, as is shown by the -S: one weapon, two weapons.
From the subtitles on the dvd of "Madadayo":
"A Akira Kurosawa Film"
Thus, it's "an hour" but "a union" and "a one-hundred-dollar bill". Note that "hour" sounds like it starts with "o", while the others sound like they start with "y" and "w".
"Akira" is both spelled with a vowel and sounded with one. Thus, "an Akira" is correct.
[There is also the possibility, in some (mostly British) versions of Standard English, to also use "an" before words that begin with "h-" that do not have their stress on the first syllable. You'll most often see this with words like "historical" and "hotel".]
Quick Quiz 22:
From a WTOP news story:Here, the problem isn't really grammar, per se; it's not syntax. It's semantics. And not "just" semantics -- semantics, meaning, well, meaning. The problem is the word "again". What does that word mean?
After telling us how Little Joe, a gorilla, had escaped the day before, run wild through the zoo, and finally been captured while sleeping in the evening, the reporter concluded her story by saying: "Little Joe had escaped from his cage again last month."
Little Joe had not escaped "again" last month -- because the thing being compared to "again" didn't happen six month ago, it happened yesterday. Thus, it should be "Little Joe had escaped from his cage previously (or "earlier" or "once before this") last month." (Unless, of course, Little Joes had escaped several times before that, and last month's escape was, in fact, again...)
Quick Quiz 21:
From a news article (comcast.net):
B.J. Wie suggested Ammaccapane and Hanson should have cut he and his daughter some slack. "They play golf for a living, they know the etiquette," he said. "We don't know, we are still learning."Nouns in English no longer change their form when they're the objects, but pronouns still do. And this error is especially jarring. You could expect to see "cut his daughter and he some slack", even though it's still incorrect Standard (after all, "his daughter and him" fits the paradigm of an undeclined phrase); but "cut he"? No, that's just not right.
The correct phrase should be "cut him and his daughter some slack", just as "cut him" or "cut me" or "cut them".
Quick Quiz 20:
Chapter title in the book "The Man Who Found Time": Hutton's Boswell'sAnother misplaced apostrophe! It's not missing whatever it was belonged to Hutton's Boswell (as, say, Hutton's Boswell's notebook) -- it's meant to be Hutton's Boswells (plural of Boswell, used figuratively to mean 'biographer').
Quick Quiz 19:
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (Reuters/22 Feb) - People have always been fascinated by creatures of mixed origin. The Egyptians had the Sphinx, with it's lion's body and human head. The Greeks had centaurs, which were half man, half horse, and chimeras, with the head of a lion and the tail of a dragon.Once again, it's the infamous "IT'S"... "It" is a pronoun. Like "he, she, they, you, we" and "I", it does not form its possessive with an apostophe: His, her, their, your, our, my... his, hers, theirs, yours, ours, mine...
So, the sentence should read: The Egyptians had the Sphinx, with its lion's body and human head.
Quick Quiz 18:
A chapter heading for the episode "Maternal Instinct" on a Stargate SG-1 DVD:
"A Grizzly Find"This is a perfect example of why Spell Check is a snare and a delusion. "Grizzly" is a perfectly good word. It's just the wrong one. "Grizzly" as an adjective means "somewhat gray". As a noun, it refers to a kind of bear. The word they wanted here is "grisly", which means "horrible, gruesome".
Quick Quiz 17:
From an ad:
The Phazer, however, reflects a portion of the signal plus an added FM signal back to the police car. This, in effect, confusing the waiting radar unit.What's wrong here is that the second sentence isn't a sentence, it's just a phrase. There are two ways to fix this:
Quick Quiz 16:
From the Internet:
In a breaking story, Comics2Film has learned that Showtime Networks has officially greenlit the comic book adaptation Jeremiah for 2002.A little hypercorrection again, perhaps. Or at least sticking to the wrong rule.
The verb "light" is a 'strong' verb (now called 'irregular'), meaning that it makes its past tense by changing the vowel: light - lit. There is a form 'lighted', of course, generally restricted to an transitive use meaning "set light to" rather than "filled with light", though both meanings can take both past tenses:
He lit the candle, and the candle lit the room.You probably don't accept all of those equally. You may even believe that "fill with light" needs a particle (lit up).
He lit the candle, and the candle lighted the room.
He lighted the candle, and the candle lit the room.
He lighted the candle, and the candle lighted the room.
Why? Well, because the verb "light" is primarily a verb. The forms with "lighted" come from feeling that it derives from the noun "light". And that is precisely where the verb "greenlight" comes from: a noun phrase—green light. It's shorthand for "to give the green light to".
And in English, verbs that come from nouns are 'weak', or 'regular'. Which means they make their past tense by adding "-ED".
This is why baseball players "flied out" instead of "flew": because the verb "to fly out" comes from the noun in "to hit a fly". Once a verb becomes an adjective and then a noun (fly - fly ball - fly) and is once again transformed into a verb (to fly [out]), it regularizes. Thus, for another example: we rang the bell when the city was ringed by enemy artillery.
(In fact, that's the source of the differing options for "light": the verb means "to set light to, or to fill with light" and can be (and is) interpreted as deriving from the noun as easily as not.)
So, even though "lit" is correct, "greenlit" is not. At least, not as a verb.
Quick Quiz 15:
From the game show "Win, Lose, or Draw":
Bert Convy, host: Show the audience whom this is.This is a classic example of "hypercorrection": going too far in the other direction. The root problem is, of course, that "who" is, in the spoken language, almost never declined any more. As a result, many people are at a loss for when to say "who" and when to say "whom", and they start saying "whom" even when "who" is correct.
But there's more going on here than that. This is a parallel to another classic misuse of "whom", the old "May I say whom is calling?" In both cases, "whom" is being used because it's thought to be the object of the preceding verb (show the audience whom; May I say whom, and in a way that's correct. But only in a way. The actual object is the entire phrase: who this is (or who is this); who is calling.
And in those phrases, "who" is the subject and must remain in the nominative (or subject) case-form.
Look at this: Who is calling? - He is calling. - I will tell you he is calling (not him is calling). - I will tell you who is calling.
And with 'show', analyze it like this: what are you showing? Who this is.
I hear an objection... "Who is it?" "It's him." So, isn't it "This is whom?"
No, not in formal Standard English. It's true that "it's me, it's him" is common usage (because, as I say below, as pronouns lose their grammatical declension they are slowly acquiring a positional declension instead), but it's not Standard. Standard is "Who is it?" "It's I, it's he".
Soooooo - "Show the audience whom this is" is wrong now in formal Standard English, but right for the spoken vernacular. So, should Bert have said it? It's a toss-up; after all, "Win, Lose, or Draw" was a game.
Quick Quiz 14:
From a news story:
"There are numerous examples of asteroids and comets in the last few years that have come very near to the world and have not been detected until the last minute or even after they pass by the world. One of them was coming in from the Sun and was not seen until after it passed the Earth's orbit. If any of these asteroids or comets would have hit the Earth, it would have been a catastrophic occasion, perhaps killing hundreds of millions of people," Rohrabacher said.
Another way to phrase this: when expressing the unreal, the result clauses need would, could or will. The condition clauses do not use those verbs; the condition clauses, instead, use verbs moved one step back in time from the result.
(The "would" in the if-clause may stem from the lingering memory of the subjunctive, but it's not quite that, either. The subjunctive uses "were" -- if it were to hit the Earth, if it were to have hit the Earth.)
Quick Quiz 13:
From the on-hold message at an ambulance company:
"Whether it's an emergency situation or a basic non-emergency transport, we think you and your family deserves the best, and we're fully prepated to provide that special service."While in American English "family" is a singular noun (in British, it's a plural), and so takes the singular verb, here "family" isn't the only word in the subject of the clause. That subject is "You and your family"—two words, two things, therefore plural. The verb should match it: "you and your family deserve the best".
Quick Quiz 12:
From an (old) newspaper article about a basketball team:
"Catchings and Holdsclaw make a powerful combination; they compliment each other nicely on the court."Words that sound alike but aren't spelled alike can pose a real problem. In this case, the words are "compliment" and "complement".
Quick Quiz 11:
From an interview on WPOC radio:
"But such a diverse coalition would rather be a fragile organization, wouldn't it?"Adverb placement -- it really does matter! Adverbs modify many things in English, unlike adjectives, which only modify nouns. Adverbs modify verbs, adjectives, other adverbs, and entire clauses. This makes their placement very important, as they modify whatever they precede (unless they're the last thing in the sentence, in which case it's what they followed). For instance:
"Would rather be" is a phrase in which the "rather" means "prefer to", as in "I'd rather be lucky than smart". "Would be rather" is a phrase in which the "rather" means "somewhat", as in "I would be rather lucky to win". In this case, the coalition would not prefer to be fragile; it would rather be a strong organization. But it would be somewhat fragile, being so diverse. Thus, the sentence should be:
"But such a diverse coalition would be a rather fragile organization, wouldn't it?" or "But such a diverse coalition would be rather a fragile organization, wouldn't it?"
Quick Quiz 10:
From a news article on line:
Space rocks fall through Earth's atmosphere regularly, and most pose little or no threat as they vaporize in the atmosphere, due to the intense heat created by friction as they speed Earthward at thousands of miles per hour. ... Some do fall to Earth. Some 400 tons of debris -- small rocks and dust -- rains down on Earth daily. But since the planet is about two-third's water, many fireballs and impacts are never noticed.There are two problems with this. The verb "rains" needs to agree with "400 tons". I'm not sure why the author got this wrong. He may have felt that "some rains" (though as a noun, some is plural, and here it's an adjective anyway);he may have felt "400 tons" was a mass, though in this case it clearly isn't; or he may have been misled by all the stuff he put in between "tons" and the verb, and have been matching the verb to the word "debris". But, "of debris" modifies "tons". It's not debris raining, it's tons raining, and thus "400 tons rain down on Earth".
Second, "two-third's" is a possessive form. No nouns form their plural in English with an apostrophe. "The planet is two thirds water", just as "it is two parts water".
Quick Quiz 9:
from a piece of fiction...
"So tell me, what’s the difference here?”This is a case of picking the wrong verb. "Allude" and "elude" sound fairly similiar, but they have entirely different meanings. "Allude (to)" means "to refer to", and is the source of "allusion". "Elude", on the other hand, means "to evade, to escape". In this case the author means that the difference has "escaped me" and hence, should have used "eludes".
“There’s a huge difference.”
“Really? Well, it alludes me.”
Quick Quiz 8:
From a web site with song lyrics:
I'll tell you of a young boy,This is a simple but common error (due to English's loss of most of our case forms). "Who" is not a noun, but a pronoun. While nouns form their possessives by adding 's, prounouns have forms with no apostrophes: his, hers, its, ours, yours, theirs, whose.
Who's age was just nineteen
He was the strongest Union Man
That I have ever seen.
Sometimes, the pronoun forms have no -S at all: her, our, your, their ... these are used "attributively", meaning, they are directly linked to the noun they modify. So, "her dog" but "the dog is hers". "His" and "whose" use the same form for both functions (the other is called "predicative use", if you're interested). And of course, "my" and "mine" (and now archaic "thy" and "thine", and dialect "hisn, hern, yourn, ourn, theirn" come from another early version of English, where -N rather than -S marked possession. In a way, that form is more reasonable: you can't confuse possession with plural. But it lost...
The key point here: Pronouns do not use apostrophes to make their possessives.
Quick Quiz 7:
(from an Apple ad)
There are several things wrong here. First, the verb "offer" is in the wrong person. Its subject is "every iBook", and thus must be "offers". Note that it parallels "is": Every iBook is and offers...
Next, "than" is the incorrect choice in this case. It should be "as": twice the memory as previous models. (You could get away with "of": twice the memory of previous models.) Why? Well, sort of just because.
"Than" is used in the second half of comparisons, but only when the first half is a adjective in the comparative (that's the -ER or MORE form) degree. Thus, "it offers MORE memory THAN previous models". "As" is used in parallel constructions, that is, when the two parts of the sentence are the same in form.
In this sentence, "previous models" is the same as "every iBook". With no words left out (leaving words out is perfectly okay when it's obvious what they are; in fact, it's very often better than putting them in and being redundant and boring), this sentence would be "Every iBook is powered by 500 MHz Power PC G3 processors, and offers up to twice the onboard memory, twice the memory expansion, and twice the storage as previous models do (or offer)."
Thus, we don't have a simple comparison but an extended parallel structure. To use "than", you'd need to make "previous models" connect to memory: "than previous models' capacity" (or some such).
Quick Quiz 6
From "The Daily Show"'s mailing list:
"It is just as funny as TDS with a different slant. There "ask an American" segment is usually great.""There" is an adverb meaning "in that place". It can also be a 'dummy subject' (with the verb "is" or "are") in sentences such as "There is an error here." (These are called "existential statements", if you're interested.)
Quick Quiz 5
From an on-line news summary:
"How will new technologies effect the home? How will students be effected by the new technologies?""Effect" and "affect" are words often confused, as here. They mean:
Quick Quiz 4
From MPT Magazine, Oct 1999:
Regarding the columns, approximately 1 in 5 respondents reads some of them, and, though enjoyed, were willing to sacrifice.Answer: Halfway through this sentence, the author lost track of what was his subject and what his object. "Enjoyed" is a active verb -- a participle, in fact -- and it must have an object. What was enjoyed? The columns. Who enjoyed them? The respondents, who were willing to sacrifice them though they enjoyed them. But, the sentence as written, falls apart around this word.
Regarding the columns... respondents read them and, though enjoyed, were willing: this, as written, refers to the respondents as the object of the participle, meaning that the respondents were enjoyed by something else. This is so because the phrase "though enjoyed" is joined to "reads and were willing". "Enjoyed" as a participle is passive, while "reads and were" is active, thus the subject they share is the actor of one (willing) but the object of the other.
Break it down like this:
About the columns
some respondents read them
and
though they are enjoyed by the readers
they are willing to sacrifice them
(It's not helped by the needless switch from singular (reads) to plural (were); it's not even as though there was going to be a "he" the author might have wanted to avoid. Regarding the columns, 1 in 5 respondent reads them and was (even better, is) willing to sacrifice.)
This entirely awkward sentence should read along these lines: "Regarding the columns: approximately 1 in 5 respondents reads them, and, though the columns were enjoyed, is willing to sacrifice." -- or, even better: "reads and enjoys them, but is willing to sacrifice them."
Quick Quiz 3
From a tv commercial:
In today's changing financial world, who can you rely on? How about a company that millions already do?Answer: While there isn't anything technically wrong with this sentence, its awkward construction brings you to a halt, especially considering that it's delivered via the spoken word. The addition of the word "trust" at the end [that millions already [do] trust?] would have avoided that jarring feeling.
Quick Quiz 2
From a history article discussing British resistance to Roman rule:
Edward Gibbon in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire records the invasions [of Britain] in great detail and quotes Agricola's contemplated invasion of Ireland, and regrets that it did not take place because 'the Britons would wear their chains with less reluctance, if the prospect and example of freedom were on every side removed from before their eyes'.Answer: The author makes it sound as if Gibbon rather than Agricola is regretting the failure of the invasion. "Gibbon records ... and quotes ... and regrets ...". A clearer sentence would have read "Gibbon records the invasions and quotes Agricola's contemplated invasion and his regrets" or "quotes Agricola's contemplated invasion and his disappointment".
Quick Quiz 1
From a news story:
Mrs Morris responded to reporters by saying, "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone."Answer: Although someone wrote into The Post claiming that it should read "Let he who is...", this sentence is, in fact, correct as it stands. Him is the object of the verb let, and who is the subject of the phrase who is without sin.
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