Being >of< 25 letters...

This is better.

it sounds good to me as it is...let's wait for an english native speaker to comment :)

Quite honestly you want the 'of' in there to tidy it up.

a second opinion won't hurt ken ^^

I don't want to get into arguments about who's more "native", but I don't think 'of' works there.

"Being 25 letters" is OK, not perfect maybe, but OK.
"Being 25 letters long" is a bit better.
"Having 25 letters" is also a bit better, IMO.

"Being of 25 letters" sounds odd.

agreed "Being 25 letters long" is way better...but I just wondered if 'long...longest' would make the sentence sound a bit redundant?

No, you want 'of' here. This is a matter of grammar really. You need to indicate possession. You can go for another approach if you like, such as -

"Spelled with 25 letters, ..."
"With a total of 25 letters, ..."

Or simply,

"With 25 letters, ..."

Examples of using 'of' to indicate possession (just for general interest) -

1. Christmas was of such great cheer!
2. The old man is of venerable wisdom.
3. We heard the terrifying roar of a lion.
4. I am of the opinion that this is the way to do it.
5. I heard the meowing of a cat.

@ken can I ask for the grammatical rule...or a grammatical explanation for why it's wrong?

There is no indication of possession in the sentence. The word possesses 25 letters and this is what needs to be made clear somehow.

Doing so with 'of' is a British take on how to deal with this. English is spoken as a native language elsewhere, so it is not surprising that there are disparities in approach.

> "Spelled with 25 letters, ..."
> "With a total of 25 letters, ..."
>
> Or simply,
>
> "With 25 letters, ..."

All of those are OK. "Being of 25 letters ..." isn't.

Here are some more examples of odd-sounding English using the same construction.

* Being of bacon and cheese the sandwich was quite greasy.
* Being of blue and yellow strips the tie was very unfashionable.
* Being of 30 kilograms the suitcase was too heavy to carry far.

...but a word can 'be' 25 letters long right? (or does it have to 'possess' 25 letters?)

You are missing commas in all your constructions.

1. Being of bacon and cheese, the sandwich was quite greasy.
2. Being of blue and yellow strips, the tie was very unfashionable.
3. Being of 30 kilograms, the suitcase was too heavy to carry far.

Apart from that, they are absolutely perfect.

(continuing) And the irrational tick of one individual does nothing to change the situation.

All right, there are two ways to think about this.
1. The word is 25 letters long.
2. The word possesses 25 letters.

There are good alternatives for wording the sentence from either perspective.

I think how I'd have translated the thing would be along lines of -

"A word of 25 letters, 'anticonstitutionnellement' is the longest in French."

And this is because the verb 'to be' is a bit redundant. That applies to the sentences listed above which were missing the commas. There are verbs which are more appropriate in each case.

1. Consisting of bacon and cheese, the sandwich was quite greasy.
2. Decorated with blue and yellow strips, the tie was very unfashionable.
3. Weighing in at 30 kilograms, the suitcase was too heavy to carry far.

Similarly here, you don't really want the verb 'to be', although you get away with it. I think this is what the two of us are really uncomfortable with.

@ken you can always add an alternative translation, both sentences can coexist :) (and thank you for your comments, I did learn sth new ^^)

Apart from that, I'm going to sleep. So no more argument.

Alright. Good night!

@ken: sweet dreams :)

Pity, because I think there's a flaw or two in the following sentence of yours:

> "A word of 25 letters, 'anticonstitutionnellement' is the longest in French."

What exactly is that comma's function? "'anticonstitutionnellement' is the longest in French." does not stand as a phrase on its own. It prompts the question, "the longest _what_ in French?".

The interpretation that makes the most sense to me is that a comma is missing:

"A word of 25 letters, 'anticonstitutionnellement', is the longest in French."

Commas are something you learn about when at school.

"A *word* of 25 letters, 'anticonstitutionnellement' is the longest in French."

As for your next point, we've highlighted in the first part of the sentence the subject for the second part, so unless we are senile there's no issue here.

Grammatically speaking 'word' can only be the subject of second part of the sentence if 'anticonstitutionnellement' is parenthetical to the sentence. If that's the case then you need two commas, not one.