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This was published on BuzzFeed as a supposedly 12th Grade English question

Should you change this sentence to make it grammatically correct?

  • "We took shelter in the middle of the night when my twenty year old brother Rob finds an inn called The Glosglore."

The 4 answers to the multi choice question were:

  1. We took shelter in the middle of the night when my twenty-year-old brother, Rob, finds an inn called The Glosglore.
  2. We took shelter in the middle of the night when my twenty year old brother, Rob, found an inn called The Glosglore.
  3. We took shelter in the middle of the night when my twenty-year-old brother Rob found an inn called The Glosglore.
  4. No change.

My question in this case is; should it not be After the Inn was found as opposed to when the Inn was found.

According to The Cambridge English Dictionary When: We can use when to introduce a single completed event that takes place in the middle of a longer activity or event. In these cases, we usually use a continuous verb in the main clause to describe the background event.

However in the answers above I do not see the finding of the Inn as taking place in the middle of the event but before the event. Am I correct? and are all these answers incorrect?

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  • Even if all of the answers are incorrect, in a multiple choice question you're supposed to choose the best or most correct answer. Options 1 and 4 are definitely wrong. 2 and 3 both sound reasonably natural but I think 3 is better because of the hyphens - which outweigh my preference for the commas around Rob.
    – nnnnnn
    Commented Jul 7, 2020 at 10:50
  • Yes! I answered 3 and was marked correct.
    – Brad
    Commented Jul 7, 2020 at 11:13
  • 1
    @Brad Note that 3 could also be wrong—unless there are two twenty-year-old brothers or two people named Rob. The lack of commas around Rob suggests that Rob is restrictive information. But since that information is not given, if we assume that, by process of elimination, 3. is the only correct answer, then we must also assume that there are two twenty-year-old brothers, one of which is named Rob, or two people named Rob, one of which is a brother.
    – Jason Bassford
    Commented Jul 7, 2020 at 12:58
  • A different page in the CED says that when can mean after: "Depending on the context, when can mean ‘after’ or ‘at the same time’." You can get there by clicking a link on the page you were looking at.
    – Peter Shor
    Commented Aug 6, 2020 at 10:10
  • 2 and 3 are fine. The choice between is a matter of style. And the use of "when" vs "after" is also a matter of style. (I would actually prefer a different commatization.)
    – Hot Licks
    Commented Aug 6, 2020 at 12:00

1 Answer 1

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We took shelter in the middle of the night when my twenty-year-old brother Rob found an inn called The Glosglore.

As a native speaker, it is very easy to read this without noticing the problem that you bring up. I can see it now. The way I first read it was to mentally fill in an implicit event, that of being without shelter.

In fact the sentence can be considered correct but relies on a very subtle distinction in the meaning of when.

In the following two sentences, the word when has slightly different meanings.

  1. We took shelter in the middle of the night when my twenty year old brother, Rob, found an inn called The Glosglore.

  2. We were struggling through the rain when my twenty year old brother, Rob, found an inn called The Glosglore.

In 1, when means after which time. In 2, when means during which time.

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  • Thank you for your answer. However I cannot find where in the CED it says that "when" can be used "when" in this way. Even if you stretch it and look at the past use of when and we make it the main clause we would need to rewrite the sentence. "when my twenty year old brother, Rob, found," an Inn....I think that this now, excessive use of comma would then make nonsense of the sentence. P.S BuzzFeed had The correct answer as "We took shelter in the middle of the night when my twenty-year-old brother Rob found an inn called The Glosglore."
    – Brad
    Commented Jul 7, 2020 at 11:05
  • @Brad chasly is correct about the different usages of 'when'. CED (and not even OED) is not the comprehensive explanation of all things English. OED, in fact, on occasion offers different (and most grammarians would say inadequate) explanations of grammatical usages (to those in say McCawley, CGEL).
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Commented Aug 6, 2020 at 11:58
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    @EdwinAshworth: The CED, on a different page (linked from the one the OP was looking at), says that when can mean after. So the CED isn't wrong or incomplete here, it's just that the online version is very badly orgainized.
    – Peter Shor
    Commented Aug 6, 2020 at 12:47

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