Grammar Help?

He hasn't the time or the inclination.

KDude, check out our Grammar for Grasshoppers board, too.

KDude said:

I could write: "He has neither the time nor inclination" which would be correct....

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It would have to be "He has neither the time nor the inclination." What follows "nor" is grammatically parallel to what follows "neither." Those two parts of the sentence should therefore have the same structure.

Schools should never have dropped sentence diagramming from the English curriculum.

Is it meant to be dialog?

What's the character, class, education, and region of the person speaking the line?

Grammar

What reph said. "He has neither the time nor the inclination" is correct.

It's either/or, neither/nor, and since you write "the time" you need to write "the inclination."

Parallelism at work.

James makes a good p[oint about who the character is, but as a writer, you need to know the correct way of writing, you need to know what parallelism is and how to use it, or you can't get it right for various characters, either.

we'll get our grammar gurus on this.

Emerald, the grammar gurus have come, deposited their (our) droppings, and flown away.

jamesaritchie said:

James makes a good p[oint about who the character is, but as a writer, you need to know the correct way of writing, you need to know what parallelism is and how to use it, or you can't get it right for various characters, either.

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You'll also need to know the correct way when you write narration and the narrator is not a character in the story.

grammar

reph said:

Emerald, the grammar gurus have come, deposited their (our) droppings, and flown away.


You'll also need to know the correct way when you write narration and the narrator is not a character in the story.

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Yes, good point.