From: "bnathyuw" <bnathyuw@...>
> --- "Thomas R. Wier" <trwier@...> wrote:
> > On the contrary, it isn't used that much in British
> > English, but it is far more frequent in American
> > English, especially in subordinate clauses. A
> > sentence like "The judge ordered that the prisoner
> > should be placed in detention", rather than
> > "that the prisoner be placed in detention", has a
> > distinctly British flavor to me.
[snipf()]
> at the same time, bare subjunctives, as in your
> example, often sound odd to my ears ( tho i rather
> like the oddness ). i imagine the most british
> rephrasing would be 'the judge ordered the prisoners
> to be placed in detention' where you have to do some
> grammatical gymnastics to avoid taking 'the prisoners'
> as object of 'ordered' ( or else put it down to
> BritEng's passion for vagueness and misleading
> phraseology )
"ordered that" seems odd somehow (maybe it's a 'that'-dropping tendency). I'd
prefer to use "The judge ordered the prisoner placed in detention".
*Muke!
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