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a. One of my friends who works at your office told me that.

b. One of my friends, who works at your office, told me that.

Are both sentences grammatically correct?

Is the punctuation of both sentences acceptable?

Does either sentence imply that I have only one friend who works at your office?

I think both are correct and neither has that implication.

Eddie Kal
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azz
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1 Answers1

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Both sentences are equivalent in meaning but you should keep in mind that there is such a thing as putting in more commas than you need. (b) can be rewritten as:

One of my friends who works at your office, told me that.

or

One of my friends, who works at your office told me that. (Although I believe this is less than ideal and would require adding in some more words after the comma)

Also consider revising both sentences into

A friend of mine who works at your office told me that.

Which sounds much more normal and idiomatic(something an English speaker is likely to say)

As for your second question:

Does either sentence imply that I have only one friend who works at your office?

This is debatable. The main verb in this sentence is 'told me', so the 'One'(subject) in this sentence may imply that you have many friends who work at your office, but only one amongst them told you 'that'.

In short, the sentence does not provide information about how many friends work at the office

Ahnaf Abdullah
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    Thank you so much. My problem is that 'works' is in the singular, so I'd assume we are talking about one person, but maybe I have a number of friends who work there and only one of them told me that. – azz May 28 '21 at 23:44
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    That's just what I said in the post: do you still have a problem? – Ahnaf Abdullah May 29 '21 at 00:00
  • Thank you so much. I wasn't sure that I had understood your meaning correctly. Now everything is clear. Thanks. – azz May 29 '21 at 02:35
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    The sentences are NOT equivalent. The first may mean I have more than one friend who works at your office, while the second does not suggest that at all. – gotube May 30 '21 at 23:00
  • @gotube I agree with you that they are not equivalent. But I don't think OP's first sentence suggests anything like what you stated in your comment. Another thing I want to mention here about the answer is that Abdullah suggested rewording OP's sentences into something because he thinks it is much more comon and idiomatic, but I think that is not the case. All three sentences are idiomatic and common but I would say it is OP's sentences that one would prefer to say rather that Abdullah's, though his suggested sentence is correct and idiomatic. – Man_From_India May 31 '21 at 01:10
  • And I don't think the one comma thing is right, which the answer says. Mentioning @azz for his notice here. – Man_From_India May 31 '21 at 01:11
  • @gotube then please explain how sentence (a) implies that more than one friend works at the office and why (b) can not also imply the same – Ahnaf Abdullah May 31 '21 at 22:34
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    @AhnafAbdullah a. means, "One of my [friends-who-work-at-your-office]...". b. means "One of my [friends], and that friend happens to work at your office, ...".

    Another way: Sentence a. means I have several friends who work at your office, one of whom told me that. Sentence b. means I have several friends, one of whom told me that, and that friends works at your office.

    It's the standard difference between defining and non-defining relative clauses

     – gotube May 31 '21 at 22:51
  • @gotube in OP's sentence it is works not work. – Man_From_India Jun 01 '21 at 00:00
  • @AhnafAbdullah I was explaining the meaning, so I needed to change the grammar slightly. Do you know what defining and non-defining relative clauses are? It's the exact question the OP is asking. – gotube Jun 01 '21 at 01:24