Answer to todays Grammar Challenge: Which of the following is correct? A. A half drunk jug of milk is on the table. B. A half drank jug of milk is on the table. C. A half-drunk jug of milk is on the table. D. A half-drank jug of milk is on the table. E. A halfway drinkeded jug of milk is on the table. ***** As always, folks, there are other and probably better ways to say this, but that is never the point of the exercise. For whatever reason, this writer wanted it communicated that someone had drunk from the jug, therefore, while HALF EMPTY and HALF FULL may sound better to some ears, they were not given as options. The point was to figure out which of the options is/are correct, not to the figure out a way around it. At least figure out whats correct, then decide to reword the sentence. :) The correct answer is C. DRUNK is the correct form here because it is a participle in this usage and DRUNK is the past participle form of DRINK (DRANK is the simple past form). Whenever a verb is being used as an adjective, youll be using the participial form. HALF-DRUNK should be hyphenated here because the two words work as a compound adjective and appears before the modified noun. You wouldnt need it in a sentence like The jug of milk is half drunk.
Posted on: Thu, 05 Jun 2014 04:31:59 +0000