ATTN: Copyeditors and Grammar Fiends

It's a normal verb plus an infinitive: He (subject) used (verb) to smoke (infinitive).

It's only a special case in that it only has that meaning in the past.

It's just a verb pattern. It needs a complement, and the complement has to be an infinitive.

Or is it a semi-modal like "ought to"?

But is habituality the kind of idea that a modal verb expresses?

You have sown doubt where once there was certainty.

Isn't the idea with semi-modals that they can still be used to form questions and negatives without auxiliaries (the same as other modals)?
So we say You mustn't go instead of You don't must go and Can he swim? instead of Does he can swim?.
'Ought to' kind of conforms to this: you could say You oughtn't to go and Ought I to stay?(although these both sound very formal).
'Used to' doesn't conform to this: you'd say He didn't use to swear instead of He usedn't to swear and Did you use to have a beard? instead of Used you to have a beard?

bit of a digression here, but an entertaining one: a takedown of strunk & white. (and here's where i admit that despite dutifully keeping it on my shelves since college, i've barely ever cracked the elements of style. now i don't feel so bad about that.)

If you had cracked it you would've given it a takedown yourself.

the reason the elements of style is great is that it is beautifully written and engaging to read - no one thinks of it as a bible

and i'd much rather read it that this guy's stilted, stuffy and self-satisfied takedown

Exactly.

"pre-madonnas" beats "for all intensive purposes" as my new favorite

That's a personal favourite of mine - it appeared in my (otherwise quite good) student paper at Uni.

it's a deep-seeded mistake

Is this OK?

"The Morbius Institution is issuing a statement that President Obama is a failure."

Or should it be something like "a statement that claims that" (or "a statement claiming that")?

Even "a statement to the effect that" sounds better than the original.

why not

The Morbius Institution issued a statement that President Obama is a failure

something (conservative?) in me would definitely add the claiming/averring/opining verb

mostly because "statement" in that sentence refers to a formal statement -- I would be less bothered by talking generically about "the statement that X is true"

The verb tense wasn't confusing me, I don't think. It just seems like the construction "object + 'that' + _____" requires a full predicate. But I suspect that the word "that" is functioning in a different way here.

Maybe "...a statement calling President Obama a failure." "Claiming that" implies a disputed factual claim that could be proven or refuted.

That's a good point, although I think the actual sentence I'm copyediting (which I disguised for the purposes of posting on a public message board) is more within the realm of a factual claim.

the Morbius Institute isn't a real thing? ;_;

it's affiliated with the Coolio Society

but yeah they lost their funding

Unless it's pretty clearly a verifiable/refutable factual issue, I wouldn't use "claiming."

C'mon, it's the Morbius Institute, all their opinions are factual claims

'is issuing' sounds wrong because it implies something that takes a fair amount of time (eg. 'is playing tennis'), but to issue a statement takes seconds.

issued should be past tense

OK, guys, I made that part up, too -- don't worry about it.

how would u go about salvaging

Print is the original media

Original sentence: "At a meeting in Tr0ms0, N0rway, representat1ves 0f the U.S., Canada, Russ1a, Denmark, and N0rway issue a jo1nt statement that the greatest l0ng-term threat t0 the surv1val of p0lar bears is cl1mate change."

Depends on the context, really.

Print is where the media began
The media was once all print

?

x-post

For starters, you've got a bunch of 1's and 0's instead of i's and o's!

uh, print is the original news medium?

I think "statement that..." is fine in that context.

"...pertains to students who have completed high school and are 18 years and over as of July 1"
vs.
"...pertains to students who have completed high school and are 18 years or over as of July 1"

FYI, I went with "or"; this came back to me changed back to "and."

The Morbius Institution issued a statement that President Obama is a failure

Obv I'm no authority of what's correct or incorrect in English, but I really like the compactness of this, without the "claiming" etc; it reminds me of classic Greek or something. Maybe the lack of subjunctive (or heh optative) in indirect-speech types of things in English is what's making it dubious.

"said" is better than "issued a statement"

Line breaks! Are there some next-level rules about where a word gets hyphenated that I'm unaware of? From my editor:

With regard to Appreciative Inquiry, the word processed is hyphenated proc-essed in this usage. Naturally, the English language does use pro-cessed when talking about things like a funeral pro-cession.

??!!

Any hard/fast rules on these things?

i thought you were supposed to break the syllables. though you could argue about which sounds belong to which syllable.

on another subject, why is it "i'm fabulous aren't i?" when "are" does not agree with "i".

It should be "am I not?" Is that usually looked upon as being grammatically correct?

distri-bute, she says is wrong; distrib-ute is right

where the hell is she coming up with this stuff?

I don't know of any hard and fast rules, but it seems like Webster's generally avoids having hyphens come after a short vowel. So in the example you cite, "funeral pro-cession" is OK because the O in "pro" is a long vowel, but "pro-cessed the claims" is not OK because the first syllable there sounds like "prah."

That sounds crazy, Abbs.

PP yeah but i guess my question is more why does "aren't i" even SOUND right? it shouldn't at all!!

However! My Webster's does break it as "pro-cess," presumably because no one actually pronounces "proc" as a single syllable. Like I said, there are no hard and fast rules. In the case of "distribute," however, Webster's does go with your editor, and I'm inclined to agree.

("Proc-ess" might also suggest that the C is to be pronounced as a hard C, so yeah, all around I think "pro-cess" is better.)

Ok good to know, I am just tired of re-hyphenating all these random words at her behest every week.

FYI, I went with "or"; this came back to me changed back to "and."

That's why you should have gone with "at least"!