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Microsoft Word has underlined a question I typed starting with "why not." Something along the lines of:
Why not walk to the hall every morning before the sun has risen and while the streets are empty?
According to Word, this is a non-standard question.
Is it correct in a semi-formal article that's intended for the Internet audience? I thought it was standard enough.
It's a "non-standard question" (whatever they actually mean by that) in as much as it starts "Why not", which would make it into a rhetorical question — one which either doesn't actually require an answer or to which you will supply the answer.
Unfortunately, automated grammar checkers can only cope with a limited set of rules; and they flag items which might require your attention (like this, perhaps) in the same way as things which really do require changing.
It's in fact a non-standard question. Kind of like a fragment. For instance, look at this.
"Taking into consideration a lot of things, I prepared for the worst. The worst thing of my life."
"the worst thing of my life" is not a sentence, although I have used it as a sentence. In the same way, a how-to question such as "How to work in a ship?" is not a standard question. It should be rephrased as "How do you work in a ship?" Now, it has the proper subject and verb as required by a question or a statement. In the same way, "why not do it?" is not a properly formatted question. It should be "Why do you not do it?" "Why do you not work with him?" etc.
Hope you get my point.
However, in Internet, we see such nonstandard questions all the time. So I suppose, in modern grammar, it's perfectly acceptable. Word may still flag it. Heck! word still flags end-of-sentence prepositions and starting sentences with 'and' or 'but'.
It does sound a bit unnatural to me as a native speaker.
"Why not..." is somewhat, err, carefree in the asking. It, to me, implies that you don't have anything better to do.
I would consider the following alternatives, although of course each one changes the meaning of the question slightly:
"Why don't we walk ..." or "Why don't I walk ..." if you're in conversation with someone. This is more of a rhetorical question, though, and might expected to be answered.
"There's no reason to not walk to the ..." is a little lengthier, and is a statement instead of a question. However, this also makes the sentence totally unambiguous and "proper English". Similarly, you could just say, "I walk to the hall..." or some variation on that non-question form.
I would say that your current sentence would be totally fine for a semi-formal article, although if you post a bit of context I'd be happy to check how it fits.
What does the end of the sentence mean ? That the streets are not empty yet ?
" ... and when the streets are still empty" would make sense.
And then, it seems correct.
