grammaticality - Can I end a sentence with "on"?

Does this sentence make sense "I would like to propose forming a partnership where we work together to provide optimal service to the new developments you are building, or have already started construction on."

Tense change: previous actions on something that's currently true

I'm describing a situation that happened in the past. To explain it, I want to use a description that is both true now and true when the situation happened.

Specifically, I want something like:

She touched me where my neck met my collarbone.

Since my neck is still attached to my collarbone (thankfully), I'm wondering if I shouldn't use the present tense here instead:

She touched me where my neck meets my collarbone.

Which is preferable, and why?

Answer

[I believe this question already exists somewhere else on this website, but I can't for the life of me find it.]

In short, though the present tense is also possible, the most natural choice would probably be the past tense:

She touched me where my neck met my collarbone.

---

The main clause happened in the past, while the subordinate clause is a timeless fact; that is, it was true in the past and it is true now. Which tense to use in the subordinate clause? General rules about the sequence of tenses shouldn't normally be involved, since it is a timeless fact.

The most logical choice would be to use the present simple, because that is the common choice for timeless facts in a main clause (cf. mice like cheese, the Earth revolves around the sun, Liechtenstein borders on Austria, etc.). If I said "Liechtenstein bordered on Austria", you might expect to hear that the borders were changed later.

However, this is where assimilation or attraction of tenses kicks in: if a certain tense is used in the main clause of a sentence, especially a past tense, most writers will have a natural inclination to use this tense throughout the sentence where possible, because it looks neater in some subconscious way. (Note that this doesn't apply so much to tenses other than the past.)

In this case, since the subordinate clause is true now and was also true in the past, the simple past tense is possible; I'd say that either tense would be all right, but the past tense looks a bit more natural, especially in speech, where this attraction usually has an even stronger influence.

---

Fowler as edited by Burchfield agrees that this is a common phenomenon:

A certain assimilation normally takes
place in many forms of sentence, by
which the tense of their verbs is
changed to the past when they are made
into clauses dependent on another
sentence whose verb is past, even
though no notion of past time needs to
be introduced into the clause.

He mentions that the past tense is normal, but the present tense is also used in this type of sentence, to a somewhat more vivid effect.

tenses - Which is correct, are staying or stayed?

Is the use of "are staying" in this sentence correct? I think it should be "stayed" because it is already past tense.

The loan specialist personally visited the house where Mr. A and Mr. B
are staying to let the latter sign the documents.

Whose content or which content

"A pertinent way to analyze this broad phenomenon is to subdivide its analysis in three sections which content is partly based on the updated findings...".

Until this passage, I was 100% sure that in this case I had to use whose instead of which.

An entry on Merriam-Webster goes like this:
(Content)
a : the matter dealt with in a field of study
… the content of sociology is inexhaustible … — Franklin H. Giddings

How do I use possessive when talking about a book written by two authors?

Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister are two authors of Peopleware. When talking or writing about the book, do I have to write:

Have you read Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister's Peopleware?

or:

Have you read Tom DeMarco's and Timothy Lister's Peopleware?

grammar - In what order should you say people's names?

I know that when you include someone, you say their name first. For example:

"John and I went to the beach"

How do you order the names when there are more than one additional people? For example:

"John, Sarah, Kevin and I went to the beach"

Does it matter?

phrasing - "That will have to" vs "Which will have to"

I am not really sure if this sentence is translated correctly into English :

Access keys have been researched and the implementation will be done in a future sprint, that will have something to do with GUI.

1. Is the use of the word "that" in this sentence correct?


2. Can I, or should I, exchange "that" for "which"?

Answer

Access keys have been researched, the implementation will be done in a future sprint which will have something to do with GUI

I would also think about swapping "have something to do with" for "pertain to"