Just gonna pop in here and say thanks for the help. Thanks for the help!

 

You have a way with words, Ched

@Zennith: if you want to pick up and old fic just for the sake of finishing it, I'd say let it rest and write something new, that will interest you and not feel like an obligatory exercise.

 

In my opinion saying breathing in/out is clunky. It doesn't flow well. I think it would be better to set the scene without having to say if he is breathing in or out, but describe it well enough that we already know or have already pictured it (the dry pain in the throat, chilling stabs in the lungs, cracked lips, etc). We don't naturally think about breathing, it is actually quite annoying when you notice it. And you try to not think about it and let it fall into the background.

 

They make medication for that. :|

 

Quick question: what is the proper way to punctuate this sentence?

"He had no idea, which one was Harry."
"He had no idea which one was Harry."

My guess is the second one, and I'm pretty sure of it, but I'm fighting with my word processor. I normally just ignore it, but I thought I'd get DLP's input first.

Of course, this entire line could probably be written better. So if you have something, have at it.

(Scene—Voldemort is looking on at three Death Eaters, one of whom is Harry dressed up. They're on brooms so the scene is moving too fast for Voldemort to use Legilmency on each of them to find out.)

 

The second one for sure. As for alternatives, "He couldn't tell which one was Harry." comes to mind. It's almost the same, but it sounds better imo. If you want to switch it up more, and if the story's narrator allows it, you could use "Which one was Harry? He couldn't tell."

 

Well, if Voldemort is the viewpoint character for that, I'd say have the wording of the narration more sophisticated. "He couldn't tell which one was Harry" seems too common for an intelligent guy like Voldemort.

 

The fact it's "Harry" and not "Potter" seems to hint it isn't from Voldemort's point of view, though.

 

It's Harry's POV. But through the Horcrux, he's been conversing with and feeling Voldemort's emotions. So while the POV might be a little more fluid, it's still ultimately being interpreted by Harry to the reader.

 

I'm no expert, but shouldn't it be as follows?

He had no idea which one Harry was.

In case that's incorrect, can you explain the positioning of the 'was'?

 

What about something like this:

It wasn’t snowing, but it was cold enough to - the heavy mist that hung about his face as he almost painfully drew breaths gave testament to that. Regardless, the night’s sky was perfectly clear, the stars were out, and beams of moonlight filtered through the tree tops into the forest clearing where the Society of the Crossed Wands had gathered.

Shrug, that's about the best I can come up with. I considered a heavy miasma of mist, but that sounded just a little too alliterative for me.

 

After thinking it through a bit, here's my understanding. I fully admit that I'm not sure it's right.

"Harry" is the "one" of the relative clause, "which one." Because of that, they are equivalent words/concepts: A = B.

The "to be" verb is acting as an equal sign. A IS B; which one IS Harry. You wouldn't say A, B equals, or write it A, B is (was). In the same way, you shouldn't write, "which one Harry is (was)."

 

I think I understand. Appreciate it.

 

Random terminological digression:

Example sentence:

"I went to the shop."

Subject: I
Object: the shop

Subject question: Who went to the shop? (I did)
Object question: Where did you go? (To the shop)

Subject questions are asked without auxiliaries, object questions require auxiliaries (in this case, "did"). This is complicated with the verb "to be", which is the exception and never uses auxiliaries. Nevertheless, you still have a distinction between subject and object question form:

Example sentence:

"She is 20."

Subject question: "Who is twenty?" (She is)
Object question: "How old is she?" (20).

The object question uses the grammatical question form, which for "be" is a reversal of word order rather than auxiliary use. The subject question uses the affirmative form (compare: She is 20/Who is 20?).

*Edit: it turns out this isn't always the case...

"The chair is red"

Subject question: What is red? (the chair)
Object question: What colour is the chair? (red)*

Indirect questions are something different.

Indicative affirmation: You are 20.

Direct question: How old are you?
Indirect question: Can I ask how old you are?

Direct questions use the grammatical form of questions, indirect questions use a "question phrase" with the affirmative form.

----------------

To answer this particular query, it should be:

"He had no idea which one Harry was."

You can see this if you switch in another verb:

"He had no idea how far Harry swam."

With the verb swim it's clear what the order should be. The alternative is clearly wrong:

"He had no idea how far swam Harry."

 

Wow, thanks, both of you. Those examples at the end really cleared it up for me.

I was initially hesitant to ask, but thanks for taking the time out to help me out.

 

Discussing it on IRC, we've pinned down why it's so ambiguous, I think.

"To be" has two functions in English: it attributes properties and affirms identities.

Property: "The chair is red."
Identity: "A chair is a thing you sit on."

If you were talking about properties, you'd put the verb first. Consider:

"He had no idea which one was red."

The opposite -- "He had no idea which one red was" -- is clearly wrong. We're left wondering if Voldemort knows what the colour red is. English always takes the word order Subject-verb-object, except in certain questions. Subject: which one, verb: was, object: red.

When it comes to identity, we have the reverse situation.

"He has no idea what a chair is."

Again, the reverse is clearly wrong: "He has no idea what is a chair." We still want SVO word order, because this is an affirmative statement. Subject: a chair, verb: is. The object, being unknown, is not part of the sentence, but would be "a thing you sit on" (from our example sentence above, "A chair is a thing you sit on."). "What" is simply a relative pronoun pointing to "chair".

So the phrase "He had no idea which one was Harry" is incorrect because it treats "Harry" like a property that the things in question can possess. But it's not a property, it's an identity.

 

Yeah, I saw that discussion. Gonna use it as a sort of rule of thumb now, until I come across an exception.

 

The problem with that, Taure, is that you're ignoring the fact that this is a dependent clause ending with a Predicate Nominative. Because it's that, rather than an accusative, you can't substitute just any other verb for "to be." Predicate nominatives can ONLY take verbs that make the first noun equal the second.

So, you wouldn't say, "he had no idea how Harry, that one equals." Instead, you'd say, "He had no idea how that one equals Harry."

The entire clause is determined by the idea that "Harry" is a predicate nominative.

EDIT: and in your next post, it's the same issue. You're forgetting the relative pronoun and the following predicate nominative.