Dredging up Grammar

A:

Dear Grammer Cop: Which of the two sentences is correct?

The depth of the dredge shall be no more than 8 feet.

OR

The depth of the dredge shall not be more than 8 feet.

Signed, Christine

A:

Dear Christine:

Wow, this is a subtle one.

I trust that using “shall” over “should” means that it absolutely cannot be over 8 feet, and that it is not a suggestion. This means it’s in the prohibitive mood, as it were.

Either way I read your examples, they both look acceptable. Whether it’s “not” or “no”, there is still a negative modifying “be”, and the word order would be largely ignored by most people. Some folks will make arguments about how many words should be in between modifiers, or whether there should be any at all, but I think some of those “rules” destroy the spirit of the language. It’s like the so-called experts who go to great lengths to never place a modifier in between the infinitive, or who never use a preposition to end a sentence with ;-)

Still, that doesn’t mean I don’t have an opinion...

Using the prohibitive mood, the negative modifier should come directly after “shall” in this instance. My reasoning is that the injunction of “not” is very important to the meaning of the sentence. “The depth shall not!” would be an acceptable imperative response to a question like, “Can the depth be ten feet?” The negative is the most important word in that sentence. So, with that in mind, “Shall not be” seems to make more sense to me. It just gives a little bit of emphasis to “not”.

On the other hand, I suppose you could also use something like this:

“The depth of the dredge shall be less than eight feet.”

So, for the short answer to your question, I prefer your second example.