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I see lot of places where we put do, when I think it is correct without do.

Is there any difference between "I do have a pen" and "I have a pen"?

apaderno
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AH.
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    http://ell.stackexchange.com/questions/980/is-it-correct-to-add-do-to-declarative-sentences-that-already-have-a-verb/981 –  Feb 18 '13 at 16:29

1 Answers1

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Usually, just "I have a pen" works. (It is always grammatically correct.)

You might want to use "I do have a pen" if someone asks, and you have to check before answering. Then, "do" would be stressed.

barbara beeton
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    I think you have enough rep to closevote instead of answering, and I think that's preferable in such clear-cut cases of duplication as this one. If you don't think the answers on the original are adequate for the new question, you should still think carefully about where to put your "better answer". To my mind, it's best to keep all the good answers under one roof, so we can easily see which one to closevote against when (inevitably) we get more of the same in future. – FumbleFingers Feb 18 '13 at 17:09
  • @FumbleFingers -- hangs head in shame; I didn't check first. Yes, it should be closed. Sorry for oversight -- still recovering from the blizzard (lost three days and coping with backlog in my real "day job"). – barbara beeton Feb 18 '13 at 18:21
  • Bear in mind I deliberately wrote "I think" twice in my first sentence - it's just my opinion, and my experience over at ELU tells me that not everyone agrees with it. Even high-rep users who (presumably) don't care about gaining more points sometimes answer questions where others have clearly indicated by comments and closevotes that they think it's a duplicate. But my position is that some types of question (this being a typical example) are bound to arise again and again. And I'd rather see just one good pageful of answers that they all lead to. – FumbleFingers Feb 18 '13 at 23:28
  • @FumbleFingers -- I do agree with you; my main activity has been on tex.stackexchange, and that's the custom of the community there. The truth is that, before I answered, I looked to see if there were any comments, didn't see any, but didn't think to search further. Had I done so and found the cited dup, I would have been happy to close-vote. It was a blunder, and if it would alleviate the situation, I would be happy to delete my answer here; I don't think it adds materially to the information content, but I'm not sure of protocol in this community. – barbara beeton Feb 19 '13 at 17:30
  • Over on ELU, RegDwight is the "Grandmaster" when it comes to tracking down earlier duplicates. I think he's the main driving force behind setting up ELL, but I can't find him in the "Users" page here. Whatever - it's good if you do successfully identify and flag a dup, but nobody could be expected to reliably establish whether a dup exists before answering. I don't know if snailplane's comment was there before you answered, but it doesn't explicitly say "Possible duplicate", which happens automatically on ELU when you closevote thus. – FumbleFingers Feb 19 '13 at 18:23