Incorrect use of adjectives and adverbs, agrement whit nouns and verbs, and when to use certain adjectives and adverbs.

See example:

The telephone exchange: module records all telephone calls managed from a switchboard, billing the guest's account for all telephone calls made from their room and recording separately their calls made outside their rooms that should not be billed to them.
asked Jan 17 '12 at 20:10 Maurizio New member

2 answers


It should be separately recording.  The second part of your sentence is a bit confusing.  How do the guests make phone calls outside their room if the phone is in the room?

link comment answered Jan 18 '12 at 16:06 Jody M. Expert

It doesn't matter if you use "separately recording" or "recording separately". Something can be horribly done, or done horribly. The syntax is fine for me. If you're a native speaker, use your intuition about the syntax; you're usually right.

link answered Feb 02 '12 at 23:38 Anna New member

I agree and disagree. Sometimes it doesn't matter where the adverb is placed. Your example is one of those instances because the verb doesn't have a direct object. But in Maurizio's sentence, the verb has a direct object. A verb and its direct object should not be separated by an adverb. Grammar rules aside, "recording separately their calls" sounds unnatural to my native ears. You could say "their calls are recorded separately" or "their calls are separately recorded" and both would be correct. But that's not how the sentence is written, and that means "recording separately" is grammatically incorrect. Jody M.Feb 03 '12 at 16:35

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