Which of these sentences is grammatically correct: He shut the door behind him and descended the stairs to the sidewalk below. or: He shut the door behind him and descended down the stairs to the sidewalk below? Why?

1 Answer
SCooke
Apr 3, 2018

The FIRST one is grammatically correct.

Explanation:

The second one includes a redundancy, or a type of "double negative" as the word "descended" already indicates the "down" direction. Thus, modifying "descended" with "down" is incorrect.

The proper change would be:
He shut the door behind him and went down the stairs to the sidewalk below.

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