Which sentence is grammatically correct?
1. Candy thinks he should have shot the dog himself, rather than let a stranger shoot him, since it was his dog.
2. Candy thinks he should have shot the dog himself, rather than letting a stranger shoot him, since it was his dog.
# 2 SOUNDS CORRECT TO ME....
thanks, hopefully I'll get more responses from a lot of different people too just so I can be sure that's 2's the right one.
#2 is correct, but do you know why? It's called parallel construction.
In the first clause, the verb is "should have shot" so in the second (and it had better be parallel because you're setting up a comparison here) the verb needs to be "let" as a shortened form of "should have let" -- get it? You would never say or write "should have letting," right?
=)
right, yeah, that makes sense thank you. I originally had #1, but then I thought that for some reason letting sounded right too. I get it now- thankx!=)
To determine which sentence is grammatically correct, we need to understand the rule for using verb forms in this context. In this case, we are choosing between the forms "let a stranger shoot him" and "letting a stranger shoot him."
The correct form in this context is the gerund form, which is created by adding "-ing" to the base form of the verb. Therefore, the correct sentence is:
2. Candy thinks he should have shot the dog himself, rather than letting a stranger shoot him, since it was his dog.
To arrive at this answer, we can follow these steps:
1. Identify the verb in question: "let"
2. Determine the correct form: In this context, we need to use the gerund form of "let," which is "letting."
3. Construct the sentence using the correct form of the verb: "Candy thinks he should have shot the dog himself, rather than letting a stranger shoot him, since it was his dog."
4. Compare the corrected sentence to the original options: The corrected sentence matches option 2, confirming that it is the grammatically correct choice.
By understanding the rule for using verb forms and applying it, we can determine that sentence 2 is grammatically correct.