Placement of "that".

English as a Second Language English Vocabulary, Grammar and Idioms
1

Where would you place the “that”, and why?

  1. “The trouble is, in the sentences first quoted, that the main subject of the sentence is not the same word that would be the subject of the participle, if this were expanded into a verb.”

  2. “The trouble is that, in the sentences first quoted, the main subject of the sentence is not the same word that would be the subject of the participle, if this were expanded into a verb.”

NB

The BNC shows 153 per 1 million words for “the trouble is that” and 143 per 1 million words for “the trouble is,”.

corpus.byu.edu/bnc/x.asp

2

Hi Molly,

My money is on sentence 1. If you read the sentence out loud, you will find that the balance is better than in sentence 2.

Alan

3

I’m more used to hearing “The trouble is…”, and without “that” either before or after the following clause.