I want to google if fluorine has more s-character. So which one is more correct 'Does fluorine has more s-character' or 'Does fluorine have more s-character'. Both sound unnatural to me when I read them. Also, are there other ways to ask this same questions without adding new chemical terms?
1 Answer
'Does fluorine has more s-character?' is ungrammatical. That is because when you make questions with does, this does takes up on itself all the grammar categories of the predicate verb — the present tense, the 3rd person, singular, leaving the predicate verb stripped of all the categories, in the infinitive form.
He speaks English. — Does he speak English?
Thus, 'Does fluorine have more s-character?' is absolutely correct. If it sounds "unnatural" to you, you can express possession in a different way, for example:
Has fluorine got more s-character?
Does fluorine possess more s-character?
or even
Has fluorine more s-character?
which is the classical way to say it in the Modern English, although in the recent years such usage has declined drastically.
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1Chemical elements are not capitalized unless they are the first word of a sentence. Commented Jun 9, 2020 at 12:29