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Please consider the following example:

The two most popular sports in Iran are football and volleyball, with baseball being the least popular.

The ", with" and "being" are not grammatically familiar to me. Can you please provide some explanation and examples?

Please enhance your answer by providing some examples and references if possible.

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First you say 'two' sports and then introduce the third one! This does not work that way. When you introduce two things and then later introduce the 'third' one, it may not take 'being'. There, 'being' means 'among'.

I may probably write it in this way--

Football and volleyball are the two (most) popular sports in Iran with volleyball being a bit less popular (you don't require 'is').

This will tell that both, as compared to any other sport, are very popular and in those two, football ranks first in popularity. Maybe, it beats volleyball by a small margin.

If you want three sports,

Football, volleyball and baseball are the most popular games in Iran, with baseball being (among those three) a bit less popular.

This will tell us that among those three (though all are popular), the game of baseball is less popular as comapred to the previous twos.

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    Your proposed sentence doesn't mean the same thing as the original sentence (although it is a perfectly good example of "with" "being".) I can't see anything wrong with the original sentence. The third sport is introduced as a 'least popular sport' rather than a 'most popular sport'.
    – ssav
    Commented Jul 28, 2015 at 9:32
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    Basically, almost all of your answer is dedicated to examples that aren't even close to what OP wants to convey with their sentence. I was really inclined to downvote.
    – M.A.R.
    Commented Jul 28, 2015 at 23:31
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    The original swntence has two distinct ideas: two sports are the most popular, and one aport is the least popular.
    – TBridges42
    Commented Jul 29, 2015 at 18:20
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Part of your confusion might be because this is an awkward construction. It means the same thing, and I think is clearer, to say:

The two most popular sports in Iran are football and volleyball, while baseball is the least popular.

Either way the idea is to conjoin two separate but related ideas: The two most popular sports in Iran are football and volleyball; Baseball is the least popular. By joining them, either the way I did or as in the original example, you accomplish several things:

  • You emphasize that these two ideas are related.
  • You emphasize the difference between these two ideas.
  • You create a more complex sentence structure. This can be desirable because a text made up entirely of simple sentences is awkward and gives the impression of poor language skills on the part of the author. I am not saying that all sentences should be complex, but a good mix of simple and complex sentences creates a better reading experience.
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+50

The two most popular sports in Iran are football and volleyball, with baseball being the least popular.

The structure with + noun + present participle is grammatically correct used in written English, especially in formal English.

According to The Free Dictionary, the preposition "with" is also used as a function word to specify an additional circumstance or condition such as "we climbed the hill, with Jeff following behind".

The present participle after the noun basewall gives the sense of the past tense as the verb mentioned earlier is in the past. So, instead of saying "and Jeff followed behind", we can say " with Jeff following behind".

His two sons are engineers and the third one is a doctor. I think we can also say ",His two sons are engineers, with the third one being a doctor.

However, to avoid any ambiguity, we can use while, whereas, or and instead of with in such sentences.

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"Being" is a form of "is" and is the verb that applies to "baseball". "With" joins the two phrases and, in this case, means "at the same time".

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