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Given is the chart concerning the percentage of graduates working in different sectors of the economy in the UK in 2004.

I would like to ask whether this sentence is grammatically correct. The part of the sentence that I am concerning is "Given is the chart concerning...", which is an inversion structure. However, My knowledge about this construction is limited. I have searched and tried to learn about it but I couldn't find this structure on google (though there are many other inversion structures such as with adverbs: seldom, rarely, not until, only when... you name it).

My English teacher showed me this structure which is used to write a report in the IELST test, but I still highly doubt that, since he is not a native.

To sum up, I would like to ask if the given sentence is correct, especially the highlighted part (in bold)?

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    It's not especially common, but it certainly is grammatical. The predicate verb phrase "is given" has been preposed (and inverted) to a position in front of the subject "the chart concerning the percentage ...". It would be more natural not to invert and add, say, "below or "above", i.e. "The chart concerning ... is given below/above".
    – BillJ
    Jun 23, 2019 at 11:44
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    There are also numerous ways of making it sound more natural by not omitting certain words that seem to have been left out. (For instance, given [here] is the chart . . .) Jun 23, 2019 at 15:58

1 Answer 1

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This word order for something that is "given", "attached", etc. is typical in some other languages, but is somewhat awkward in English.

See this discussion about using "attached is". And here is an example of "given" at the beginning of a sentence in German.

The sentence you quote does not sound natural in English, and could be improved by rephrasing to omit the inversion. Some common ways of saying the same are

  • Here is a chart showing the percentage of graduates working in different sectors of the economy in the UK in 2004. (in a verbal presentation)
  • Chart 1 describes the percentage of graduates working in different sectors of the economy in the UK in 2004. (in a paper or report)

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