Last week we revisited our perennial problems with who and whom. This week, another favorite grammar gaffe: the failure to match singular with singular, plural with plural.
Sometimes these agreement problems â€" involving subject and verb, or noun and pronoun â€" arise from haste or incomplete revision. Often the enemy is a convoluted sentence that leaves reader and writer alike confused about what goes with what. Some tricky constructions require extra care â€" especially those in which the sense is plural but the grammatical structure singular, or vice versa.
The relative pronoun “who†refers to Ms. Margellos and requires a sinular verb, “has endowed.†The prepositional phrase “with her husband†does not make “who†plural.
A similar problem; make it “has displayed†to agree with the singular subject “intervention.†Here, too, the prepositional phrase “together with …†does not make the subject plural. As in the preceding example, the complicated, overstuffed sentence makes it hard to see what goes with what.
Here, we couldn’t decide whether to treat “perce! ntage of their neighbors†as singular or plural; we used a singular verb, then the plural pronoun “their.â€
Make it plural throughout. It’s clear that the focus is on the plural sense, since you would never say “what percentage of their neighbors has already paid its taxes.†(Treat “percentage†as singular when the focus is on the unit; for example, in comparing two percentages: “The percentage of their neighbors who paid taxes is higher than the percentage of their friends who did.â€)
Total of or number of (and a few similar expressions, like series of) may take either a plural or a singular verb. In general, when the expression follows a, it is plural: A total of 102 people were injured; A number of people were injured. When the expression follows the, it is usually singular: The total of all department budgets is $187 million; The number of passengers injured was later found to be 12.
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Same-sex marriages are now performed in about a dozen countries and at least 9 of the 50 states in America, while it is constitutionally banned in others.
The singular “it†doesn’t work in referring to the plural “same-sex marriages.â€
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Mr. Zuckerberg sought to reassure Facebook users that their posts and pictures would be found only if they want it to be found.
This may have resulted simply from haste; obviously, “it†cannot refer to “posts and pictures.â€
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In a Word
This week’s grab bag of grammar, style and other missteps, compiled with help from colleagues and readers.
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This leading club for indie rock bands (known as Moe’s in the 1990s) draws a devoted following. The more intimate and swanky music lounge called Barboza opened downstairs last April.
The stylebook warns against this type of pos! h word (a! lso beware chichi, glitzy, tony and, of course, posh, among others). This particular term is so dated and corrupted that a reader is likely to suspect we mean the opposite.
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Dr. Hoekstra, an evolutionary and molecular biologist, said the work, largely carried out by graduate students in her laboratory, Jesse N. Weber, now at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at the University of Texas at Austin, and Brant K. Peterson, showed that “complex behaviors may be encoded by just a few genetic changes.â€
The pileup of phrases, requiring a total of seven commas, makes this sentence awfully hard to digest.
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Plus, most homes are heated with a bukhara, the Afghan version of a multifuel stove â€" and one of the most commonly used fuels is dried animal dung, much cheaper than wood chips or logs. …
…Plus a very high concentration of particulates, known in the trade as PM 10 â€" which means particles smaller than 10 microns, small enough topenetrate deeply into the lungs, and an important indicator of air pollution â€" but no specific fecal bits.
From the stylebook:
plus. Do not use plus as a substitute for and: He was an experienced gandy dancer, plus a smooth talker. Use plus as a preposition (five plus one), as a noun (Her knowledge of hematite was a plus) or as an adjective (a plus factor). Because plus is not a conjunction, use a singular verb in a sentence like Five plus two is seven.
In this case, substituting “and†would not fix either the weak transition (first sentence) or the fragment (second example). Rephrase both.
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It can involve pictures, phone calls, social media profiles, text messages, e-mails and even phony friends or family members.
“Fake†would have been less colloquial.
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“San Diego Surf†was at least partially edited, but although publicized, it was never released.
The! styleboo! k prefers the shorter and simpler “partly.â€
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[Caption] Jeroen Dijsselbloem, left, the Dutch finance minister, who is likely to become the next head of the Eurogroup, with Jean-Claude Juncker, the group’s outgoing chief.
The stylebook prefers the unambiguous “departing.â€
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In a country where the satirists say it is hard to compete with the political reality, more than twice the percentage of households in Israel watch “Eretz Nehederet,†produced by the Keshet media group, than tune in to the official election broadcasts.
The “more than twice the percentage†comparison doesn’t work with “than tune inâ€; and “the percentage†and “in Israel†seem unnecessary. Perhaps make it: “more than twice as many households watch … as tune in to …â€
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Josh Freeman, a labor historian at City University of New York, said that rather than wonder why strikes were so rampant then, “I wuld kind of flip it on its head†and note that since the 1980s, strikes “have gone down to historic low levels and stayed there.â€
Before that, Mr. Freeman said, “a lot of unions were still confident and strong from the long post-war period when unions were very powerful, then in the 70’s they got hit by a lot of economic bad news†â€" inflation, stagflation, recession â€" and felt confident in their ability to fight back and make the best of the circumstances.
With partial quotes and long sentences, this passage is confusing. For example, the quotation that starts “a lot of unions†is a run-on that should be split into two sentences.
Also, our style is ’70s, not 70’s.
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Mr. Swartz, 26, who faced a potentially lengthy prison term and whose trial was to begin in April, was found dead of an apparent suicide in his Brooklyn apartment on Jan. 11.
“Suicide†is the manner of death, not the cause, so this phrasing doesn’t work! .
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Debriefing reporters after a morning session, which was closed to the news media, Mr. Ryan said he had warned members that they had to “recognize the realities of the divided government that we have†and urged them to unite behind leadership on the coming fiscal debates.
“Debrief†means to get information from someone, not to provide information. Make it “briefing†or simply “talking to.â€
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Had Seattle been more aggressive in the first half, Wilson may have been headed to the N.F.C. championship game. …
Even with that, the Seahawks may have won if not for a fluke play.
We wanted “might,†not “may,†in both of these contrary-to-fact constructions.
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In a rare foray into domestic policy, Mr. McDonough reached out to Catholic Church officials after a flap over the administration’s insistence that health insurance plans, including those offered by Catholic instittions, offer birth control to women free of charge.
From the stylebook:
As a noun to mean fuss or controversy, flap is colloquial and trite.
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Ron Bonjean, a Republican strategist and once the top spokesman for the former House speaker J. Dennis Hastert, a Republican, described the phenomenon thusly: “These are people who are political realists, they’re political pragmatists who want to see progress made in Washington, but are politically constrained from making compromises because they will be challenged in the primary.â€
“Thus†is already an adverb; there is no reason to add “ly.†(Also, “House Speaker†should be uppercase with the name, even for a former speaker.)
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Supporters of college athletics say the costs are worth it: ambitious sports programs, and, especially a winning season, can lift a college’s reputation, donations, applications and school spirit.
No comma i! s needed ! after “and.â€
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The pattern is hardly unique to the governor’s campaign, though his numbers are perhaps the most striking, as he has built a $22.5 million war chest, according to new campaign finance disclosures made this week.
Let’s try to avoid this political cliché.
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In “Silver Linings Playbook,†Ms. Lawrence plays the unruly, sex-crazed widow Tiffany. “We all loved what we were doing, though it was a little bit more nerve-wracking,†she acknowledged.
Nerve-racking. It’s in the stylebook, the dictionary and our spell-check system.
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Depending on what Mr. Armstrong says in the interview about his purported doping, Mr. Weisel, who was a co-owner of the United States Postal Service Pro Cycling Team through a cycling management firm that he helped found called Tailwind Sports, could be subject along with his partners to lawsuits from corporate sponsors seeking millions of dollars.
purport means seem (often questionably) or intend: The letter purports to be signed by Washington. She purports to be leaving for China. But never the purported letter or the purported mobster; this verb cannot be used in the passive voice. Grammatically, purport behaves in sentences the way seem does: if one word will not fit in a construction, neither will the other.
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In a 1979 review, Ada Louise Huxtable was unimpressed by two residential buildings on Fifth Avenue, and they are still generally agreed to look awful.
The stylebook calls for specifying cross streets. In this piece, the omission was particularly glaring.
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The general, post-meal consensus was that while Rudolph may have done fine guiding Santa’s sleigh, he shined brightest on the plate.
Make it “shone.†The stylebook explains:
shine, shined, shone. When shine has an object, the past tense is shined: He shined the light at the boat. But when it has no object, the past tense is shone: The sun shone yesterday.
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“Residents have been suffering for two-and-a-half months,†she said.
Recorded announcement: No hyphens are necessary in an expression like this.
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The largest is a superblock owned by Brookfield Office Properties, directly east of Related’s, that extends from Ninth to 10th Avenues and from 31st to 33rd Streets.
The stylebook wants singular “street †and “avenue†when “to†appears in phrases like these. (Use the plural with “andâ€: “between 31st and 33rd Streets.â€)
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The obvious solution â€" to deaccession the relatively worthless items â€" has been blocked, however, by clauses in Colonel Friedsam’s will that require the museum to obtain permission from the estate’s executors.
p>This obscure jargon means “to remove (an item) from a museum or library collection preparatory to selling it.†We should have said it more simply.
