5 exercises — practise listing contributing factors with "what with".
0 / 5 completed
1 / 5
Which sentence correctly uses "what with" to introduce two contributing factors joined by "and"?
"What with the holiday freeze and the reduced on-call rotation, the release was pushed to January" correctly uses "what with" once, followed by a list of noun phrases joined by "and". Option B incorrectly repeats "with" before the second item. Option C splits "what with" apart with the wrong word order. Option D reverses "with" and "what", which is not the fixed phrase.
2 / 5
Which sentence correctly uses "what with" followed by a gerund phrase as one of the contributing causes?
"What with the vendor migrating their API and the new compliance review, onboarding took twice as long" correctly follows "what with" with a gerund clause ("the vendor migrating") and a noun phrase, both valid after this connector. Option B uses the bare infinitive "migrate" instead of the required gerund. Option C adds the unnecessary infinitive "to be". Option D breaks up the fixed phrase "what with".
3 / 5
Which sentence correctly places the "what with" clause of causes at the start of the sentence, before the main clause it explains?
"What with three data centers reporting elevated latency, the team declared a sev-2 incident" correctly opens the sentence with the "what with" cause clause, followed by a comma and the main clause. Option B places "what with" incorrectly at the end of the cause clause. Option C awkwardly interrupts the main clause with the reason in the middle. Option D adds an unnecessary comma directly after "what with".
4 / 5
Which sentence correctly uses "what with" to list three cumulative causes for a delayed launch, keeping parallel gerund forms?
"What with the API rate limits, the schema migration failing twice, and the holiday support gap, the launch slipped a week" keeps the second item as a noun-plus-gerund phrase ("the schema migration failing") parallel with the surrounding noun phrases. Option B uses the infinitive "to fail" instead of the gerund. Option C uses the finite past tense "failed", which breaks the noun-phrase pattern required after "what with". Option D reorders the noun and gerund awkwardly.
5 / 5
Which sentence correctly uses "what with" for a single, informal cumulative cause in a Slack status update, distinct from the more neutral "given"?
"What with everyone still onboarding this week, code review turnaround has been slower than usual" correctly uses the informal cumulative-cause phrase "what with" before the noun-plus-gerund clause. Option B incorrectly merges "given" and "with". Option C incorrectly merges "what" and "given". Option D adds an unnecessary "that" at the end of the cause clause.