The English Oracle

What is wrong with "Where should this car be parked?"?

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Track title: Realization

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Chapters
00:00 What Is Wrong With &Quot;Where Should This Car Be Parked?&Quot;?
00:27 Accepted Answer Score 21
01:01 Answer 2 Score 9
01:21 Thank you

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Full question
https://english.stackexchange.com/questi...

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Tags
#grammaticality #wordorder

#avk47



ACCEPTED ANSWER

Score 21


When used as a stand-alone sentence, you're right:

1) Where should this car be parked? <-- correct

2) Where this car should be parked?

Now... if it's part of a larger sentence it's different:

1) Do you know where should this car be parked?

2) Do you know where this car should be parked? <-- correct

I would speculate that either there was some other typo that made MS Word think you were in the second scenario, or it was just a flat-out bug in the grammar checker.




ANSWER 2

Score 9


1. is right; 2. is wrong. The grammar checker probably got confused by the fact that if the question mark were omitted, it would be the other way round.

It may be possible to devise a computerised grammar for English that makes fewer mistakes than a schoolchild (always a good discussion topic in the bar), but Microsoft Word doesn't have one.