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Is the following sentence grammatically correct and is there a better way of writing it?

"X has founded his practice after working for very diverse offices such as Y and Z."

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2  
Hello arthurmani. Please, expand your question to specify what exactly seems to be your problem with the sentence, as in its current state it's a bit off-topic. Creative writing isn't really the point of this site. I'm sure you'll get some replies, though, but you should specify your problem anyway. – Richard Rodriguez Aug 17 '12 at 20:53
Hi @FrantišekStanko, I ccorected my question and hope it is clearer. Beyond "being creative" with english language I just want to know different ways of saying a sentence that might be correct but maybe not best. This might just my french roots in which we learn "better" ways of saying sentences at school. – Arthur Mamou-Mani Aug 17 '12 at 21:17
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You probably want to cut 'has' if this is a narration; if it's an announcement, you probably want 'has just founded' or 'recently founded'. I'd put a comma after 'offices', or rewrite as 'for such diverse offices as '. – StoneyB Aug 17 '12 at 21:43
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Hello Arthur and welcome to the English Language and Usage site. I'm wondering whether you're aware of the existence of writers.stackexchange.com. It seems to me that your question would be more on-topic on that site. I have voted to have your question moved. – user16269 Aug 17 '12 at 23:57
Hi Arthur, as others have pointed out, this question in its current form is not a good fit for this site. You might with to have a look at this simple quideline on our meta. Thank you. – RegDwighт♦ Aug 19 '12 at 10:46

closed as off topic by Matt Эллен, David Wallace, MετάEd, JSBձոգչ, tchrist Aug 18 '12 at 15:38

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3 Answers

up vote 4 down vote accepted

Grammatically, there's not really anything wrong with the sentence, but I'd go into a few details to improve it:

1) Change "after working" to "by working":

X has founded his practice by working for very diverse offices such as Y and Z.

Reason: Using after sounds like the person in question has worked for certain office and then suddenly somehow realized the meaning of life and found his practice. Maybe I'm just being too pedantic here, but I guess that's what you wanted in the first place.
Using by it's implied that the person has been acquiring experience and thus funding his practice by/while working for those offices. A longer time scheme is implied here.

2) I'd get rid of "very":

X has founded his practice by working for very diverse offices such as Y and Z.

Diverse already means what you want it to mean and I'm not aware of the fact it's usual to connect it with "very", although I'm not claiming it's not grammatical.
If you want to put something there, try using "many diverse offices."

3) I'd put a comma before "such as":

X has founded his practice by working for diverse offices, such as Y and Z.

Reason: Listing those offices isn't really necessary for the sentence to work. Think of it as a non-defining relative clause. Also, in speech you'd normally make a pause there, so the comma is on your side from both points of views.

4) You could probably get rid of "has" completely, but this depends on the context, which we don't have, so I'm not going further into that.

The final result:

X (has) founded his practice by working for (many) diverse offices, such as Y and Z.

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up vote 0 down vote

There are two distinct ideas in this sentence, so it would be clearer if it were written as two separate sentences. I would write the following.

Xerxes worked for some very diverse offices, such as Yodaworks and Zaphodcorp. Later, he founded his own practice.

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up vote -2 down vote

I disagree. It is correct. It needs no commas or further punctuation marks.

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I doesn't needs them too. – user16269 Aug 18 '12 at 1:07

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