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Which one is grammatically correct?

  1. "Together with Rudolf and Friedrich I wrote this book."

  2. "Together with Rudolf and Friedrich we wrote this book."

Jasper
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user44756
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    first one sounds correct – Saqeeb Nov 15 '16 at 20:00
  • "Together, Rudolf, Friedrich and I wrote this book," or "Rudolf, Friedrich and I wrote this book together." – Mick Nov 15 '16 at 20:03
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    They're both completely "valid", but they mean different things. The second version would be used in contexts like My wife and I have often collaborated with other authors. For example, together with Rudolf and Friedrich, we wrote this book (points to collaboratively-written book). But the fact that I might have done something "together with" others doesn't mean I should start refering to myself using the "royal we". – FumbleFingers Nov 15 '16 at 20:59
  • I'm a fan of dropping prepositional phrases where possible. Then you have "Together I wrote this book." or "Together we wrote this book." I would only use the second one. So I vote for "we". – user3169 Nov 15 '16 at 21:09
  • @FumbleFingers: what's the difference the first and second sentence ? Both seem to be same. – EngFan Dec 18 '16 at 11:46
  • @engfan: In OP's first example there are exactly three co-authors (Rudolf, Friedrich, and me). In the second, there must be at least four, since *we* can only refer to myself and* one or more others* (not including Rudolf or Friedrich, since #2 could be rephrased as We wrote it together with Rudolf and Friedrich, so they are obviously additional to "us"). – FumbleFingers Dec 18 '16 at 13:13
  • @FumbleFingers: I don't really understand how "we" exclude "Rudolf and Friedrich as the sentence itself starts with"together..." ? could you please explain this? Thanks – EngFan Dec 18 '16 at 16:22
  • @engfan: Regardless of which order you specify the components in, the construction A together with B means A and* B. By the same token, A and B together with C* means A and* B and C. In your case, C = we* (= *us) - we don't know who else the speaker is referring to when he says we, but it certainly can't be Rudolf or Friedrich. That would be like saying Together with my wife, my wife and I went to bed* (i.e. - total nonsense). – FumbleFingers Dec 18 '16 at 16:33

2 Answers2

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Both the sentences are correct grammatically.

The phrase together with is used in the same pattern as in addition to, besides, and along with; it doesn't alter the subject of a sentence.

In the latter, the subject "we" indicates that in addition to me there's another person or more persons who wrote this book, of course; Rudolf and Freidrich are not included in 'we'.

Khan
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If forced to pick, I would say "Together with ... I wrote this book."

But as you can tell it's an awkward sentence. It feels odd to give credit to two other people, who helped to some unknown degree, and then apparently claim that you wrote it. It leaves the reader with unanswered and distracting questions.

On the other hand, "together with ... we" is wrong because it's missing the first-person pronoun in the sentence. You need to include yourself somewhere if you want to use the "we".

Some better ways to phrase this:

I wrote this book with the help of Rudolf and Friedrich.

This book is a collaboration between Rudolf, Friedrich, and myself.

Rudolf, Friedrich, and I wrote this book together.

Andrew
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