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Pl. see the sentence below

[1]. Hardly had the bell rung when Matthew started running out of his classroom.

I guess the construction is correct. If I change this to

[2]. Hardly the bell had rung when Matthew started running out of his classroom.

[3]. When Matthew started running out of his classroom, the bell had hardly rung.

Is there any grammatical error in these constructions or which one of these is most neat and why. We see the first construction most often.

Thanks---Suddhasattwa, India

Suddhasattwa Ghosh
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2 Answers2

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Your second sentence is not correct. The reason is that if a sentence is begun with a negative word like 'hardly, scarcely, no sooner etc. the word order should be reversed (Negative word + auxiliary + subject + verb) in that clause. For more details and examples here is a screen shot of the chapter from the Practical English Usage by Michael Swan: enter image description here

mahmud k pukayoor
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Generally you would not start a sentence with "hardly".

This sentence is more correct: "The bell had hardly rung when Matthew started running out of his classroom" although an alternatively would be: "The bell had hardly started ringing when Matthew started running..."

Your option [3] is valid, but does not flow as well in English as the above suggestion.

Paul L
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