Need Grammar Help! (1 Viewer)

[Gabe D]

I'm going to disagree with everybody else, and say that I think "at risk of breast cancer" is no good, and that "at risk for breast cancer" is the correct choice. I can't quote any grammar rules, but I think "at risk of" should be followed a verb form, most often a gerund: "at risk of developing breast cancer." I can't swear that this is a hard and fast rule, and I'm not inclined to spend my time researching it, but I definitely think "at risk of" is incorrect in this case.

 

[andrew markworthy]

Yes, I'd noticed this before in using a style checker (obviously American-based) that came with a word processing programme (sorry, I mean 'program'). Having said that, I used to use 'while' in writing articles intended for American academic journals, only to have the 'while' changed to 'whilst' on several occasions at the proofs stage. In the end I just gave up, since the meaning is perfectly clear in both American and British English.

 

[Rex Bachmann]

Joe Schwartz wrote (post #19):


As hard as it may be to believe, there is no one "correct" answer. There is no one "correct English". The language is in transition and the grammar is changing. That's what dialects (locally or socially determined variants of a language) are all about. "Correctness" is inevitably determined by
politicshttp://hometheaterforum.com/htforum/showthread.php?&postid=681906#post681906:

"A language is a dialect with an army . . .", as the old saying goes.

(It ain't "tidy", but that's the way the world is.)