This is the example sentence for the vocabulary word 焦点, meaning “focal point:”
先生が顕微鏡の焦点を合わせ方について説明をしてくれていた時、私は上の空でした。
If I’m not wrong, wouldn’t it be 焦点の合わせ方, not 焦点を合わせ方?
Planning on sending an email, just making sure it’s actually a mistake first.
I think 焦点を合わせる is correct, you can search words appear together here, search for 焦点.
There are 1264 sentences with を合わせる and only 173 overall that use の (no matter what verb).
Why do you think it’s wrong? 合わせる is transitive and needs a direct object.
But when you attach 方 doesn’t it basically turn into a noun? I was under the impression it stopped functioning like a verb.
Obviously 焦点を合わせる itself is a separate issue from the grammar of using 合わせ方.
For instance, I wouldn’t say お箸を使い方, but お箸の使い方, even though obviously you say お箸を使う
I think it depends on if the phrase is 合わせ方 (あわせ + ほう) or 合わせ方 (あわせかた). If it’s the former, you use を. If it’s the latter, you use の.
What would 合わせ方 (ほう) be? What kind of grammar is that?
I think charlesfm is right because 合わせる isn’t being used as a verb. Also, I did a search using google books for ’焦点を合わせ方’ and got 0 results, while ‘焦点の合わせ方’ produced 500.
It’s just 合わせ plus ほう. Like:
そのほうはよろしいです.
(That way is good)
That doesn’t seem like a grammatical way to connect 合わせ to ほう though.
I’ve never heard of like 食べほう or 歩きほう or anything like that.
I knew that you can’t say something like 食べほう.
You might actually need の between there now that I think about it. But I could of sworn there was something different grammatically with 合わせ. My memory is probably just failing me.
Hmm for some reason it thought it was 〜ほう, now I think it should be の in the example sentence 
It should be の as far as I can tell.
Wouldn’t it have to be 焦点を合わせる方法?
Which again, means something else.
I don’t see why it would need to be 方法. You could have 焦点を合わせる方
I’ll just email them
Thank you everybody.
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