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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.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

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?

The Sentence Sleuth said...

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