{"id":2264,"date":"2016-07-19T11:02:57","date_gmt":"2016-07-19T17:02:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/?p=2264"},"modified":"2020-11-25T11:18:46","modified_gmt":"2020-11-25T17:18:46","slug":"the-haves-and-the-have-gots-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/effective-writing\/the-haves-and-the-have-gots-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The Haves and the Have Gots"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif;\">In a recent post we bemoaned the widespread overuse of <em>surreal<\/em>: \u201cWhy keep regurgitating <em>surreal<\/em> when something atypical happens\u2014is that all you\u2019ve got?\u201d A reader found the sentence objectionable: \u201cReally? \u2018is that all <u>you\u2019ve got<\/u>?\u2019 How about \u2018all you have\u2019?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif;\">His email insinuated that \u201call you\u2019ve got\u201d is unacceptable English. Many grammar mavens down through the years have challenged the legitimacy of <em>have got<\/em>, claiming that the phrase is no more than an ungainly and protracted way of saying <em>have<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif;\">But we see an appreciable difference between <em>is that all you\u2019ve got?<\/em> and <em>is that all you have?<\/em> Our sentence was meant to convey exasperation\u2014<em>is that all you have?<\/em> just doesn\u2019t work there. It sounds too dainty.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif;\"><em>All you\u2019ve got<\/em> is good idiomatic English. \u201cLove life. Engage in it. Give it all you\u2019ve got,\u201d wrote the poet Maya Angelou. Does anyone think that changing the last sentence to <em>Give it all you have<\/em> would be an improvement?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif;\">Our emailer will be heartened to learn that an anonymous eighteenth-century grammarian (quoted by Eric Partridge) agreed with him: \u201cIt may, therefore, be advanced as a general Rule,\u2014when <em>Possession<\/em> is implied, it is vulgar to use HAVE in Construction with GOT.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif;\">But today this \u201cgeneral Rule\u201d seems to have gone the way of promiscuous capitalization and commas before long dashes. We consulted our reference library and came up with the following:<\/span><\/p>\n<p>\u2022 <span style=\"font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif;\">\u201c<em>Have got<\/em> has been used \u2026 in literary English for more than four hundred years \u2026 It is found in the writings of Scott, Austen, Thackeray, Dickens, Morris, Ruskin, Carlyle, and most of the great nineteenth century English authors.\u201d \u2014<em>Bergen and Cornelia Evans, 1957<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p>\u2022 <span style=\"font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif;\">\u201cThe words <em>have got<\/em>, as in \u2018I <em>have got<\/em> a really good car,\u2019 have long been put down by schoolmaster sticklers as an error, but most authorities agree that it is not.\u201d \u2014<em>Theodore M. Bernstein, 1977<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p>\u2022 <span style=\"font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif;\">\u201cThe phrase <em>have got<\/em>\u2014often contracted (as in <em>I\u2019ve got<\/em>)\u2014has long been criticized as unnecessary for <em>have<\/em>. In fact, though, the phrasing with <em>got<\/em> adds emphasis and is perfectly idiomatic.\u201d \u2014<em>Bryan A. Garner, 1998<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p>\u2022 <span style=\"font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif;\">\u201cIt\u2019s idiomatic, standard, and especially common when special emphasis is intended \u2026 No modern authority with a reputation to lose cares if you use <em>have got<\/em> for <em>have<\/em> or <em>must<\/em>, and you needn\u2019t waste your own energy worrying about it either.\u201d \u2014<em>Charles Harrington Elster, 2005<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In a recent post we bemoaned the widespread overuse of surreal: \u201cWhy keep regurgitating surreal when something atypical happens\u2014is that all you\u2019ve got?\u201d A reader found the sentence objectionable: \u201cReally? \u2018is that all you\u2019ve got?\u2019 How about \u2018all you have\u2019?\u201d His email insinuated that \u201call you\u2019ve got\u201d is unacceptable English. Many grammar mavens down through [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,53,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-effective-writing","category-idioms","category-verbs"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2264"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2264"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2264\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}