Usage and Grammar

Q. Is it correct to use “with” as a conjunction, as in “The regulator received four complaints this month, with two of them related to anticompetitive behavior”? I don’t do it, as I want to avoid it being read as “along with,” but I see this type of construction quite often.

A. According to Garner’s Modern English Usage (4th ed., 2016), the use of “with” as “a quasi-conjunction to introduce a tag-on idea at the end of a sentence” is increasingly common but still best avoided. Your example sentence could be fixed with the help of a semicolon and the addition of “were”: “The regulator received four complaints this month; two of them were related to anticompetitive behavior.”