a question about Grammar Inversion
I saw this sentence 'we were **** when suddenly came the exciting news that ****'

Is 'suddenly came the news' grammatically right?
why can't it be 'suddenly the news came that..'?

I searched a lot about inversion grammar,but few(maybe no) examples like this are given.i know some examples like ‘here/there/... came the news’.
is there any need to use inversion when a sentence starts with 'suddenly'?so...is this alright in formal English according to the rigid grammar?

Question

a question about Grammar Inversion
I saw this sentence 'we were **** when suddenly came the exciting news that ****'

Is 'suddenly came the news' grammatically right?
why can't it be 'suddenly the news came that..'?

I searched a lot about inversion grammar,but few(maybe no) examples like this are given.i know some examples like ‘here/there/... came the news’.
is there any need to use inversion when a sentence starts with 'suddenly'?so...is this alright in formal English according to the rigid grammar?

Answer

position of subject and verb can be interchanged, yes, that can be done grammatically. It is generally done to break away from the monotony of word order. Sometimes, to add dramatic or poetic effect or just to sound different or stylish, it is done.
Thus, suddenly came the news is as correct as suddenly the news came. :)

Answer

You can say all those things.  I recommend a comma after suddenly.  Suddenly, the news came that....

Answer

...when (there) suddenly came....

The verb here is "there came", with the "there" being left out. Yes, this is quite OK in English. Unusual, but OK.

Answers · 3

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