Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Criminal Sentence 110: There Is vs There Are

From a blog I read:

"There's very few 'nevers' in publishing."

A blog is conversational, so I guess I should allow this conversational "there is" (singular) with "nevers" (plural). However, I prefer that writers be more precise, so "there are" would be better.
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2 comments:

  1. AnonymousOctober 24, 2008 at 2:29 AM

    I agree on this but I catch myself making that very same mistake. Question: should it be Where are my keys? or Where's my keys?

    ReplyDelete
  2. The Sentence SleuthOctober 24, 2008 at 8:44 AM

    Hi. Since "my keys" is plural, you need to use "are."
    Where are my keys? (plural)
    Where is my chihuahua? (singular)

    ReplyDelete

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