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.

Related questions
Impact of this question
2089 views around the world
You can reuse this answer
Creative Commons License