this post was submitted on 31 Mar 2024
14 points (93.8% liked)
English usage and grammar
363 readers
1 users here now
A community to discuss and ask questions about English usage and grammar.
If your post refers to a specific English variant, please indicate it within square brackets (for instance [Canadian]).
Online resources:
- Cambridge English Dictionary
- Merriam-Webster Dictionary and Thesaurus
- Gilman's Webster's Dictionary of English Usage. This is a great and witty reference about usage, its history, and its controveries
Sibling communities:
Rules of conduct:
The usual ones on Lemmy and Mastodon.. In short: be kind or at least respectful, no offensive language, no harassment, no spam.
(Icon: entry "English" in the Oxford English Dictionary, 1933. Banner: page from Chaucer's "The Wife of Bath's Tale".)
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Yes, it's correct. "Getting caught" is a gerund and acts as a noun that they can possess, hence their getting caught.
Them getting caught is also correct but them acts as a direct object in this case. You could drop them and still have a readable sentence, "...no chance of getting caught", but them just adds more info.
Their getting caught has fallen out of use in American English in favor of them getting caught, but both are still correct. The former gives me a more formal feeling as well, suitable for academics.
Thanks!
Similar to "if you don't my asking" - as a native English speaker even, I used to say "if you don't mind me asking". I think the latter is even more common as the colloquial but I try to use proper grammar where I can so have adopted the former.
It seems awkward in this sentence for some reason, I have seen it (their) used before, but in those instances it made l more sense in my head.