Could anyone please help me? I'm not sure which sentence is correct to write:
"The question is what are my chances to break even"
or
"The question is what my chances to break even are"
questionssentence-constructionword-order
Could anyone please help me? I'm not sure which sentence is correct to write:
"The question is what are my chances to break even"
or
"The question is what my chances to break even are"
Best Answer
In the first case there's a comma missing, in the second case you put a linking verb at the end of a sentence. The latter is not incorrect but it sounds forced and it's unnecessary. As William Safire wrote "If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is."
I'd recommend the forms
The first is a statement, the second is a question. Of course if you want to go with
you can, it is technically correct and formal.
Now, in the second case the sentence fragment "what are my chances to break even" is a question in itself, so using it with "The question is" is informal, especially in writing, and it may be considered incorrect by some. It's fine most of the time, especially in the US, but if you want to go formal for certain, I'd recommend breaking it into a statement and a question, something like
You can also use a colon
But be careful with that, you can't use a colon after an incomplete sentence, so
is incorrect, although in speech there's no difference between this and my second recommended sentence.