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Which is correct?

"In fact it is rather simple, just a story of two children. But in this apparent simplicity the book delivers a wonderful exposition of so great memories, ideas and dreams.

or,

"In fact it is rather simple, just a story of two children. But in this apparent simplicity does the book deliver a wonderful exposition of so great memories, ideas and dreams."

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  • Can you please finish the sentences? With the fragments you provided, I'm not able to tell if it is a question or what the context is.
    – Element115
    Commented Mar 2, 2018 at 20:13
  • I edited the sentences.
    – user7945753
    Commented Mar 2, 2018 at 20:22

2 Answers 2

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But in this apparent simplicity, the book delivers a wonderful exposition of so many great memories, ideas, and dreams.

But in this apparent simplicity, the book does deliver a wonderful exposition of so many great memories, ideas, and dreams.

These would be proper ways to write it, unless it was a question, in which case you'd write:

In this apparent simplicity, does the book deliver a wonderful exposition of so many great memories, ideas, and dreams?

Though you could argue that does the book is just an inversion of the book does, I still think that it's not very natural to write it that way at all. I usually only see does used before the subject if you are asking a question. Example:

Does the book read nicely?

Vs.

The book does read nicely.

Though this isn't always a rule, it's generally considered to be more grammatical in my experience.

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  • Thanks. Inversion in affirmative sentences generally (but far from always) happens with negative adverbial phrases I am assuming?
    – user7945753
    Commented Mar 2, 2018 at 20:25
  • That's right, @user7945753. It's a rather literary stylistic effect, but only with a negative-polarity adverbial phrase do you ever find it. (Do you see what I did there?). You could make your sentence grammatical by adding "only" after "but" - but that would change the meaning slightly.
    – Colin Fine
    Commented Mar 2, 2018 at 23:10
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The "does" in the second sentence is sort of archaic and a bit poetic. There are places and times where it wouldn't have been incorrect. But today it is, at best, unclear.

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