They are ... vs There are ...

[nicholmere]

Hello WHF gurus,

I have a question about my word choice in one of my reviews. Any help will be appreciated.

I originally posted the following:

"The bristles make the ZoomGroom a unique cat brush
They are 26 thick, little, rubber cones protruding from the bottom of the brush"

My question is regarding, "They are .. ".

When I wrote it, it looked awkward. When I read it aloud, it sounded awkward. However, it was what I wanted to say. I used They , because I wanted to describe the bristles, the subject of my sentence, so I think the word choice was correct.

However, since it just felt wrong I eventually changed it to:

"The bristles make the ZoomGroom a unique cat brush
There are 26 thick, little, rubber cones protruding from the bottom of the brush."

Which makes the brush the subject, I think , of the sentence.

Bonus question:
Should " thick, little, rubber cones " be hyphenated? I have dim memories (I'd rather have dim-sum) of a rule regarding multiple adjectives requiring a hypen.

S.O.S.

[infoscott]

I think if you read up on the E-Prime write-off contest, you would find your answer. By using a form of "to be" in your sentence, it came across weaker, and probably gave more 'personality' to they bristles than they deserved. I would change the sentence to read,

"The twenty-six stubby rubber cones protrude from the bottom of the brush."

[soxfan[$]]

I might be wrong, but I think the subject of your revised sentence becomes "26 thick, little, rubber cones." It becomes clearer if you reverse it:

26 thick, little, rubber cones etc. are there.

"Protruding from the bottom of the brush" describes the cones, so that behaves like an adjective.

I don't know about the hyphen rule. If that's true, I gotta go revise a bunch of epinions.

Ailsa

[jnbmoore]

There are would be more correct

or another way of doing it would be:


The bristles, 26 thick, little, rubber cones protruding from the bottom of the brush", make the ZoomGroom an unique cat brush


or

The bristles -- 26 thick, little, rubber cones protruding from the bottom of the brush -- make the ZoomGroom an unique cat brush

or

26 thick, little, rubber cones protrude from the bottom of the brush. These bristles make the ZoomGromm an unique cat brush.

And don't forget that it's an before a vowel

Have fun.

Bridgette

[nicholmere]

Hi everyone,

Thanks for the replies. I'm not sure why such a simple sentence caused me so many problems, but I'm grateful for the advice.

Thanks,
Katherine

[nicholmere]

Hi Bridgette,

This comment got me thinking (a good thing):

Originally posted by jnbmoore
... These bristles make the ZoomGromm an unique cat brush
... And don't forget that it's an before a vowel

I'm familiar with the rule, but I thought there were exceptions. For example, if the word begins with a long u should I still be using the an? I thought that in the case of the word unique, that the a was appropirate.