Talk:write

Usage notes

The transitive AmE use with the recipient as the grammatical object is shown in the following example from the New Yorker: I had written my mother about all this ( 1987 ). This construction, formerly standard in BrE, is now in restricted use unless accompanied by a second (direct) object, as in I shall write you a letter as soon as I land in Borneo. --Backinstadiums (talk) 16:43, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

In American English, you can write (to) someone: She writes me every month. You write someone a letter, so ✗Don’t say: *Please write to me a letter soon. "Write" is often used in the progressive: I am writing to tell you something important.--Backinstadiums (talk) 17:24, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

If the indirect object is a pronoun, it usually goes in front of the direct object. If the indirect object is not a pronoun, it usually goes after the direct object with to in front of the indirect object, Once a week she wrote a letter to her husband. --Backinstadiums (talk) 17:52, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

Are you saying that usage in the progressive is specific to AmE? Thank you for these notes, although they could be attributed more clearly. --Chealer (talk) 10:34, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

Backinstadium's comment comes from recent editions of Henry Watson Fowler's A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, which remain copyrighted. The new Fowler's modern English usage (1996) contains the full entry at page 858, which can be seen on the Internet Archive. The original edition (1926), which is no longer copyrighted, documents the same complication on page 738, with a somewhat different explanation:

1926, Henry Watson Fowler, A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, page 738:

[write with personal object]. In I will write you the result, there are two objects, (direct object) the result, & (indirect object) you. In literary English, an indirect object is used after write only if there is also a direct object, but the direct object may be used without an indirect ; that is, I will write the result, & I will write you the result, are idiomatic, but I will write you soon, or about it, is not ; if a direct object is wanting, the person written to must be introduced by to : I will write to you about it. We wrote you yesterday, Please write us at your convenience, &c., are established in commercial use, but avoided elsewhere. The following from a novel is to be condemned : The Lady Henrietta, she who was to keep him out of Arcadia, & who believed him to be in Cannes or Mentone, wrote him regularly through his bankers, & once in a while he wrote her.

A 2009 post on the Separated by a Common Language blog has more. --Chealer (talk) 12:06, 2 May 2024 (UTC)