Learn English – ‘….has long been…’ or ‘…has been long….’

grammar

OALD's entry's example:

The company has long been shunned by ethical investors.

I always get confused with word order (unless they are 'adjectives' for what I know the order).

The example is there. Why not '…has been long…'?

As a non-native speaker, I'd be cautious splitting 'has been'. Is it possible to keep those words intact?

Best Answer

This is to emphasis the word 'long'.

If you need to emphasize a specific fact or point in your text, there are several ways to focus the reader’s attention on it. This is one of those.

Eg:

It was the strangest piece of music I had ever heard.

Here, the word 'ever' is emphasized.

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