"Having not" vs "not having"

Question

I did a bit of searching on the difference between "not having" and "having not", but I could not find a convincing argument. I typed this sentence;

Congratulations on not having given up yet!

It was corrected by a friend to;

Congratulations on having not given up yet!

I am certain that my friend has a better command of English and that he is correct. Could someone explain why the first sentence is incorrect?

CSJ · Answer

To me, having not given smells a bit like to not care, a split infinitive.  Not having had much experience in this area, though, I'm interested to hear what other people think.

Michael Lai · Answer

Both versions are fine, but not having given up does sound a little bit more fluent. If you want to express it in the affirmative tone, I would rephrase it as:

"Congratulations on not giving up yet!"

I would say that generally when using "having + VERB" you are expected to provide more detail because it is hinting that there is something else to follow. For example: "Having to deal with this problem is giving him more things to worry about."

"Having not" vs "not having"

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