OK pedants, answer me this...

[MrsBadger]

Which is more correct?

Have you got a pen?
Do you have a pen?
Have you a pen?

(3am bouncing session with dd, brain went into meltdown and it's bothering me.)

Grammatically, all are ok, it's a question of stylistics.

'Have you got' is sometimes considered a little inelegant; 'Do you have' is fine, possibly slightly American in comparison with 'Have you got'; 'Have you' is slightly stilted, I think.

Have you/have you got/do you have a specific reason for asking?

jiggling a baby in the dark for an hour makes my mind, well, wander.

I was also mulling over Scottish vs English constructions

Have you not got a pen?
I've not got a pen

Haven't you got a pen?
I haven't got a pen

The annoying answer to all three is 'yes, thank you'

Wouldn't the Scottish be
Have ye nae pen?

I have a sneaking liking for "I don't got none".

It's like my mum always taught me to ask 'would you like a sweet?' and not 'do you want one?' one way sounds more polite than the other i think.

I would reply "get your fucking own" so I would ask "hee hee, look at my luvverley pen... you can't have it"

Gizza pen.

Do you have a pen I could lend of off you?

Borrow us your pen mate

Or (common usage when I was in school) "can you borrow me a pen?"

Cross posted with stuffitllama

soren
same school plainly

get a pencil

I will lend you my pen when you ask nicely.

(which, as I typed it for the first time, I realised was stuffit - llama. I always read your name as stuff it all mama. Well, you live and learn).

Yer can't 'ave me pen, me mam give it me.

plainly not the school where one asked to borrow one's friends' caran d'ache

I always like the way Americans answer questions like 'Have you got a pen?' with 'Yes, I do'. Just makes me smile. Call me weird.

To answer the OP, as Agonybeetle says, they're all 'correct'. It's all about formality isn't it. It might feel odd to ask your 5-year-old 'Have you a pen?', in the same way it would feel odd to say to the Queen 'Gorra pen?'.

I've also got a niggling feeling that the meaning you're trying to get across has an effect. E.g. if you're asking someone to lend you a pen, 'Do you have a pen?' sounds a bit weird to me, whereas if you're asking them to write a phone message down, it sounds less weird. This could be codswallop though.

I didn't want to borrow said pen, I was, as you suggest, going to give them a phone message and wanted to know if they had one on or about their person.

Otherwise I'd say 'Would you mind awfully if I borrowed your pen?' or 'I'm terribly sorry, I don't suppose you have a pen I could borrow?' because I am a old sap.

i would say have you got a good memory or do you need a pen

or would i

not an old sap but perhaps just join the Polite Society

"Please may I join the Polite Society, if it's alright with you?"

lol MrsBadger

I would say 'Have you got a pen' for both situations I think, but then I am down with the kids. Word.

Isn't is funny that people point to the excruiciatingly polite vagueness in Japanese speech and don't seem to notice just how similar we are.

EG: 'I was just wondering whether you might have a pen that I could borrow.'

.. which is at theast three steps removed from actually being so crass as to ask to borrow a pen.

'Have you got a pen that I can borrow?' becomes 'Have you got a pen that I could borrow?' becomes 'Might you have a pen that I could borrow?' Then the questioner chickens out of even asking and just reports the idle musing about the situation, ''I was just wondering whether you might have a pen that I could borrow.'