Question

Correct the sentence at the underlined point.
Hardly he has entered the station when the train whistled.
a. Hardly had he entered
b. Hardly he entered
c. He hardly had entered
d. No improvement

Answer 1

Hint: When you begin a sentence with ‘hardly’, it becomes conjunction. These conjunctions are used to join sentences with two main subject matters. The answer that uses this correlative conjunction in the right way will be correct.

Complete answer: In grammar, conjunction may be a part of speech that connects words, phrases, or clauses that are called the conjuncts of the conjunctions.
Conjunctions have a very decisive function because they join other words and phrases together. Without conjunctions, we could only make extremely simple sentences. Some conjunctions contain multiple words. They are called correlative conjunctions.
In the given sentence, the conjunctions should be separated and distributed properly, so that the meaning of the sentence does not change at all.
In the given sentence, there are two different subjects.

When we use correlative conjunctions, the first part of the sentence goes through a distinct change. When we start the sentence with ‘hardly’, we are supposed to write the verb before the subject. So, the order for the first part of the sentence will be ‘conjunction + verb + subject’.
Now, we know what we are looking for. Let’s go through the available options-
a. Hardly had he entered - The order of this option is correct, as it follows the grammatical rule of correlative conjunctions. The verb is placed before the subject. This is the required answer. So, this is the correct option.
b. Hardly he entered - The order of this option is incorrect, as it does not follow the grammatical rule of correlative conjunctions. The verb is placed after the subject and it is not in the right tense. This is not the required answer. So, this is an incorrect option.
c. He hardly had entered - The order of this option is incorrect, as it does not follow the grammatical rule of correlative conjunctions. The verb is not placed before the subject. This is not the required answer. So, this is not the correct option.
d. No improvement - We already know that this is an incorrect option as the given sentence is grammatically incorrect. So, this is not the required answer.

Note: Try to understand the meaning of the given sentence. Then, try to understand what correlative conjunctions are. Try to use the correlative conjunction in the given sentence and choose the most appropriate option accordingly.