Tell me more ×
English Language & Usage Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for linguists, etymologists, and serious English language enthusiasts. It's 100% free, no registration required.
up vote 3 down vote favorite

I found the following paragraph in the article with the caption, "That Settles It: Yoko Ono Did Not Break Up Beatles” in Entertainment section of October 30 Time magazine:

The Japanese artist and musician, who was had married John Lennon shortly before the Beatles disbanded, has long been blamed for pulling the group apart. But, according to a preview of the Frost interview that appeared in The Guardian, McCartney dispels that notion. “[Ono] certainly didn’t break the group up, the group was breaking up,” he is quoted as saying.

I felt somewhat harsh on my ear with the expression- “was had” in the line “The Japanese artist and musician, who was had married John Lennon shortly before the Beatles disbanded, has long been blamed for pulling the group apart.”

Are both “was / had" necessary before 'married' in this sentence? Why is it? Can’t we say simply “The Japanese artist and musician, who had married John Lennon shortly before the Beatles disbanded,”

share|improve this question
5  
This is what I would call a "word-processor error": some writer or editor had written something like "The Japanese artist and musician, who married John Lennon shortly before ..." — and then decided to write "was married to" and changed it to "had married" or something and took out the "to" but forgot to remove the "was" from the sentence. It is an error, plain and simple. – Robusto Oct 31 '12 at 1:31
2  
@Yoichi Oishi- Good catch. Maybe they should hire you as their copy editor. – Jim Oct 31 '12 at 1:50
What @Robusto said. It looks exactly like the kind of error writers make with word-processors today, that they'd have been less likely to make in the days of pen and paper. – FumbleFingers Oct 31 '12 at 3:04
Why on earth do two people want to re-open this question? – FumbleFingers Nov 1 '12 at 1:01

closed as too localized by MετάEd, waiwai933♦ Oct 31 '12 at 4:51

This question is unlikely to help any future visitors; it is only relevant to a small geographic area, a specific moment in time, or an extraordinarily narrow situation that is not generally applicable to the worldwide audience of the internet. For help making this question more broadly applicable, see the FAQ.

1 Answer

up vote 3 down vote accepted

In the sentence "The Japanese artist and musician, who was had married John Lennon shortly before the Beatles disbanded, has long been blamed for pulling the group apart", having was had makes it ungrammatical. It has to be one of the following to be grammatical idiomatic English:

..., who was married to John Lennon...
..., who had married John Lennon...
or
..., who married John Lennon...

This is probably an example of spell-checker copy-editing.

share|improve this answer
2  
Not sure about your first option; it suggests she had stopped being married to him by the time they split up. I think your third option is by far the best. But have a +1. – user16269 Oct 31 '12 at 1:00
This is typical AmE. However, I agree with your analysis. I too think the third one is best, but I'm sure that not all native speakers will agree on that. – Bill Franke Oct 31 '12 at 1:09
3  
I don't understand how how "spell-checker copy-editing" could cause such an error. It seems far more likely to me the original writer started with either was or had, but had second thoughts and switched to the other. And simply failed to correctly erase the first choice for some reason (having third thoughts, maybe, and unable to decide which to delete! :) – FumbleFingers Oct 31 '12 at 1:23
A spell checker would not underline either word, but a grammar checker would. I can turn off the grammar checker in MS Word. I can also turn off the spell checker. In any case, the piece wasn't properly copy-edited by the writer or the copy editor. If all they use is the spell checker, they won't catch such errors, which is why I always have both the spell checker and the grammar checker on. I frequently hallucinate when editing and think I've erased that wrong first choice. The grammar checker usually brings me back to reality. – Bill Franke Oct 31 '12 at 3:33

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.