Wrong structured setence

[gxnn]

My friend, who was a Chinese native but has lived and worked in Toronto, Canada for nearly 20 years, wrote a sentence in her social media account (which is used for her business, I think) as follows:

As a small business owner, your business depends entirely on you.

In my opinion, this sentence is not hard to understand, but the structure is not right and the subject cannot be "your business".

But if it is restructured, how?

 

[ToPleaseHim]

I don’t think there is anything wrong with this sentence. Do you not like the generic “you?” It could be rewritten as “A small business’s success depends entirely on the owner.” I would avoid writing it like this because of the conflict with making a possessive plural (‘s and s’s are technically both correct. I prefer the former, but the latter is what is taught in school today.)

I would use “incorrectly” instead of “wrong” in the thread title, incidentally.

 

[TheWorldBuilder]

As a small business owner, your business depends entirely on you.

That is a perfectly acceptable English sentence, as would be the slight variation which reverses  depends and  entirely .

Although the language appears constrained by its rules, there are many which can be bent where necessary.

 

[gxnn]

If put as the following, can it be said it is correct grammatically?

Your business depends entirely on you as a small business owner.

By the way, in Adele's song "Rolling in the Deep", she said,

Baby I have no story to be told

I think it should be "I have no story to tell (you)"

but whether it should be in active or passive voice, I am confused.

 

[jehoram]

If put as the following, can it be said it is correct grammatically?

Your business depends entirely on you as a small business owner.

That works better.

By the way, in Adele's song "Rolling in the Deep", she said,

Baby I have no story to be told

I think it should be "I have no story to tell (you)"

Popular song takes quite a few liberties with syntax in order to preserve a rhyme scheme or meter. I wouldn't rely on it as a guide to proper usage.

but whether it should be in active or passive voice, I am confused.

 

[TheWorldBuilder]

If put as the following, can it be said it is correct grammatically?

Your business depends entirely on you as a small business owner.

By the way, in Adele's song "Rolling in the Deep", she said,

Baby I have no story to be told

I think it should be "I have no story to tell (you)"

but whether it should be in active or passive voice, I am confused.

That works, with or without the optional comma after  you, although it sounds more stilted in that order.

Jehoram's advice about songs is worth heeding. From a personal perspective I'd say that it applies especially to lyrics from that particular source.

The only other advice I can offer, at this moment, is to relax. Don't worry so much about formal rules that you lose the essential exchange of information which language exists to facilitate. Native speakers mangle their mother tongue every day and at least 75% of the UK population could be considered functionally illiterate. Find those authors whose style pleases you and read, read, read.... Absorb the variety of their prose, note the differences between a description which seems as clear as glass and another which adds more detail but obscures the primary image.

You're welcome to message if you have other concerns.

 

[pplwatching]

"As a small business owner" is a dependent clause. It can not stand on its own. "your business depends entirely on you" is an independent clause. Joining the two with comma is grammatically correct.

In the lyric's case, "told" is an infinitive. Conjugating "to be + infinitive" as "to be told" or "to tell" is a matter of personal choice by the song writer. While we're at it, "Baby" is used as a vocative - a word that addresses the listener directly. In the song, the vocative is indicated by intonation (emphasis). In writing, a vocative is set off in the sentence with a vocative comma. So, the lyric in its written form would be "Baby, I have no story to be told."

 

[gxnn]

In an organized event, like a workshop held in a hotel, there are people/attendees coming and going. I used the phrase "check in" and "check out" for these two actions, but my friend who asked me for the opinion believes they sound "very informal" and that "report on arrival" and "departure" are her choice.

A sentence written by an English teacher of a Chinese college: "When we have sincere desire, goodwill, and political wisdom, no ice is too thick to break, no conflict too big to settle." My opinion is: to be broken, to be settled

Dear friends, please grant me your valuable advice.

 

[pplwatching]

"Check in" / "check out" are used in the hospitality industry. For example, "Check in is at 3PM. Check out is at 11AM." I also "check in" with my wife after work. I think they're formal enough, but they lack urgency. You can check in after 3PM and check out before 11AM. When I travel, I can check in with my wife before or after I eat dinner. There is no set time.

"Report on arrival", to me, sounds more like an imperative (directive). It implies that reporting is the first thing to be done on arrival, not after getting a meal (for example). Additionally, if you want people to sign in/out every time they arrive/leave, then "check in/out" seems to convey that better without explicitly saying so. That said, if your friend is looking for formality, then (while generally interchangeable) "on" is considered less formal than "upon". "Report upon arrival" is more formal than "Report on arrival".

For the second sentence, I am not an expert (by any stretch) and have to apply my frequently-flawed powers of reasoning and Google-fu. First, I would look at the parts of speech. The verb in "is too thick/too big" is "is". "Broken/settle" can be an adjective (the ice is broken, the conflict is settled) or the past participle (I have broken the ice, we settled the conflict). "to be" in "too thin/big to be" would function as a linking verb connecting the subjects ice and conflict to their respective adjectives broken and settled - if the writer were talking about the condition of the ice (whole or in pieces) or conflict (settled or unsettled). But break/settle are being used as verbs here - actions that are/become possible, so I think we can eliminate your wording.

But those verbs still need to be conjugated. Soooo, what's happening here? In English grammar, a nonfinite verb is a verb form that "does not show a distinction in number, person, or tense." Nonfinite clauses lack a subject and a finite verb. These two clauses don't have a finite subject and "to break/settle" are nonfinite infinitives, so I think that these are in fact nonfinite clauses and that "to break" and "to settle" are correct.