As a freelance editor, I am often asked by clients, readers, and friends about my personal take on grammar rules or the common usage of words or phrases. Once, I was asked to share my thoughts on the use of the phrase “to have” and its past participle “had”:
Q. I should like to read your take on the following quizzical use of the verb “to have” and its past participle form “had:”
It seems common and proper for American English speakers to say, “I had my carpets cleaned, I had my car tuned, I had my hair cut.”
Also common and seemingly improper are the assertions, “I had my house burn down,” or “I had my dog hit by a car,” both implying the speaker’s active role in the events transpired.
“My house burned down,” “My dog was hit by a car,” are more accurate if no active role was taken.
As I write it occurs that laziness is at the root of this problem. [In other words] the proper way to address the above would be “Yesterday was horrible. I had my hair cut and my dog was hit by a car.”
Am I correct or is it proper to have “had your wife robbed?”
A. Have is a useful word, with many definitions. Merriam-Webster Unabridged has 17, most of which have subsenses. As a result, it can be difficult to determine precisely which sense is being used, but I’ll give it a shot.
In sentences like “I had my carpets cleaned,” had tells us the relationship between the subject (I) and the object (my carpets cleaned): that I caused my carpets to be cleaned.
In sentences like “I had my house burn down,” had is again connecting the subject (I) with the object (my house burned down), but it’s showing a different relationship. This time, had shows that the subject was subjected to or experienced the action buried in the object.
In both cases, the emphasis is on the subject of the sentence and how the object relates to it.
They’re grammatical sentences, but they’re not what the modern writing style emphasizes. In modern writing, we prefer shorter, more direct sentences and, as a result, more immediate action. Both of these sentence structures put the real action at a distance. They soften it, sometimes smothering it.
In general, I’d opt for the more direct “My carpets were cleaned” and “My house burned down.”
However, I don’t like to say something should never be done. Every writer has their own style, and there are times to use such sentence structures, particularly when you want to emphasize the relationship between a subject (I, Sally, etc.) and an action the subject didn’t take. This seems especially true with your first examples. “I had my carpets cleaned”: in other words, I didn’t actually clean my carpets but I was the reason they were cleaned. It’s like passive voice in that the main point isn’t the action in the sentence.
You can read more about the usefulness of passive voice in “Learning to Love Passive Voice” here on the blog.
A version of this article originally published in 2013 in Copyediting newsletter.
