grammaticality - "Now I am" vs. "I am now"


Which is more correct?



Now I am the main stakeholder...



or



I am now the main stakeholder...



Do the intonations imply different meanings?



Answer



Neither is more correct. They mean different things.


You first example can be interpreted like so:



Now that I am the main stakeholder ...



Which means you are about to make a pronouncement about how things will be with you are the main stakeholder.


E.g.



Now I am the main stake holder, all developers will have their wages halved.



As a statement by itself it can be used to mean I am now the main stakeholder, but you have to put emphasis on now and make it seem like you are marking the the moment. A similar idea would be to make a future announcement:



From 6pm today I will be the main stake holder.



Of course, if you put a comma just after now you get a different meaning:



Now, I am the main stakeholder.



This is using now as an interjection, it doesn't really mean anything with regard to the sentence. The rest of the sentence is just a statement explaining who you are.


Your other example



I am now the main stakeholder.



is a statement explaining that from this moment you are the main stakeholder. This structure can be used in a triumphant way, as an exclamation, for example:



Jensen Button is now the winner!



or in a dry factual way:



I am now the answerer.



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

commas - Does this sentence have too many subjunctives?

verbs - "Baby is creeping" vs. "baby is crawling" in AmE

time - English notation for hour, minutes and seconds

etymology - Origin of "s--t eating grin"

grammatical number - Use of lone apostrophe for plural?

etymology - Where does the phrase "doctored" originate?

single word requests - What do you call hypothetical inhabitants living on the Moon?