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"The time that gets wasted in conversing, that time will also be saved." is a right sentence?


Or it should be: The time that gets wasted in conversing, will also be saved."

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    The former sounds poetic, as though the repetition is there to make a point. The latter has the virtue of brevity. Less is more. (Lose the comma!) May 24, 2018 at 10:33
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    Only the second one really sounds fluent. In normal, daily speech, we wouldn't repeat the subject like that.
    – stangdon
    May 24, 2018 at 11:35

2 Answers 2

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The relative clause here is that gets wasted in conversing.

The time {that gets wasted in conversing}

is a noun-phrase.

It can be the subject of a verb. But in your example, the noun phrase with the relative clause is rather like a truncated clause without a verb. It merely presents the subject for consideration. You could punctuate as follows:

The time that gets wasted in conversing ... that time will also be saved.

or

The time that gets wasted in conversing— that time will also be saved.

The main clause

that time will also be saved

has demonstrative adjective that, determiner that, modifying time. that is not relative-clause-introducing that there.

Consider:

I saw a car hit the man riding on the bike.
-- Do you still see the car?
Yes. It's that car over there, the red one.

The phrase that time points back to the time mentioned and qualified in the initial noun phrase, which is just hanging there in space, if you will; the main clause completes the full thought.

As both comments indicate, this is a sort of oratorical or literary or presentational strategy, not something likely to be heard in a typical conversation.

It is as if there were an implicit "And with respect to" at the head of the sentence to put focus on the subject:

And with respect to the time that gets wasted in conversation, that time will also be saved.

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The first sentence has an appositive.

a grammatical construction in which two elements, normally noun phrases, are placed side by side so one element identifies the other in a different way.

For instance,

My sister Jane

or

Jane my sister

The usage you offer is unusual, even poetical, in cast, and so would be odd in most contexts.

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