1

a. One of my friends who works at your office told me that.

b. One of my friends, who works at your office, told me that.

Are both sentences grammatically correct?

Is the punctuation of both sentences acceptable?

Does either sentence imply that I have only one friend who works at your office?

I think both are correct and neither has that implication.

Improve this question
1
  • Yes, but they mean different things.
    – Lambie
    May 28, 2021 at 21:45

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
-1

Both sentences are equivalent in meaning but you should keep in mind that there is such a thing as putting in more commas than you need. (b) can be rewritten as:

One of my friends who works at your office, told me that.

or

One of my friends, who works at your office told me that. (Although I believe this is less than ideal and would require adding in some more words after the comma)

Also consider revising both sentences into

A friend of mine who works at your office told me that.

Which sounds much more normal and idiomatic(something an English speaker is likely to say)

As for your second question:

Does either sentence imply that I have only one friend who works at your office?

This is debatable. The main verb in this sentence is 'told me', so the 'One'(subject) in this sentence may imply that you have many friends who work at your office, but only one amongst them told you 'that'.

In short, the sentence does not provide information about how many friends work at the office

Improve this answer
10
  • 1
    Thank you so much. My problem is that 'works' is in the singular, so I'd assume we are talking about one person, but maybe I have a number of friends who work there and only one of them told me that.
    – azz
    May 28, 2021 at 23:44
  • 1
    That's just what I said in the post: do you still have a problem?
    – Ahnaf Abdullah
    May 29, 2021 at 0:00
  • Thank you so much. I wasn't sure that I had understood your meaning correctly. Now everything is clear. Thanks.
    – azz
    May 29, 2021 at 2:35
  • 2
    The sentences are NOT equivalent. The first may mean I have more than one friend who works at your office, while the second does not suggest that at all.
    – gotube ♦
    May 30, 2021 at 23:00
  • 2
    @AhnafAbdullah a. means, "One of my [friends-who-work-at-your-office]...". b. means "One of my [friends], and that friend happens to work at your office, ...". Another way: Sentence a. means I have several friends who work at your office, one of whom told me that. Sentence b. means I have several friends, one of whom told me that, and that friends works at your office. It's the standard difference between defining and non-defining relative clauses
    – gotube ♦
    May 31, 2021 at 22:51

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .