Even the New York Times is losing its grip on our grammar: Witness John Branch’s Seeing Vulnerability in N.F.C. Foes, Giants Are Confident:
And the Giants, boosted by a 7-1 road record and the knowledge that none of the five top seeds are currently on even a two-game winning streak, see reason to view their postseason outlook optimistically.
(Emphasis mine). “None” takes a singular verb – none of the top five seeds IS currently on a two-game winning streak. So that’s bad, but not uncommon. What’s awful is that some copyeditor at the Times liked that sentence and used it for a pull quote, repeating the grammatical error:
None of the five top seeds are on a two-game win streak.
Now, maybe I’m a little off on this one, but what exactly is the skill set required to be a copyeditor? If command of the language isn’t #1, it’s #1A, right?
By the way, I’ve got a 1 pm chat today (Friday 12/28) over at the Four-Letter.
According to Wikipedia, the indefinite pronoun “none” can be conjugated with either singular or plural.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indefinite_pronouns
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/none
If you have an online account for the Chicago Manual Of Style (I don’t), you can check their site. Here’s the link to the section on indefinite pronouns:
http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/ch05/ch05_sec064.html
I write copy all day long (when I’m not updating my blog or reading stuff like this)but I’m not sure what qualifies my copy editor to do their job. Is my life difficult is a skill set?
Also, it’s funny that Giants fans are holding out hope that their team might beat both the Packers and Cowboys.
More of these copyeditors need to keep a copy of Strunk’s “The Elements of Style” around.
Trieu – “none” is a contraction (dating way back) of “no one.” If you remove the prepositional phrase “of the top five seeds,” the pull quote becomes “none are on a two-game win streak,” which sounds awful for two reasons, one being the aforementioned is/are problem, and the other the combination of a verb in a plural conjugation with the definitely-single “streak” construction. (Two teams can not be on one winning streak. That’s two streaks.)
Like I said, this is way worse on the copyeditor who pulled out the quote and didn’t think there was any problem with it than it is on the writer, in my opinion.
Keith – This doesn’t have anything to do with the recent posting, but it would be great if you could list your TV/radio appearances (much like the chat listing in the post today) that are upcoming. Thanks.
Steve: I’ll start doing that with my next TV hit, probably Monday afternoon.
I don’t think it’s as clear cut as you make it out to be. “Woe is I” (great book) says none can mean “not any of them”.
http://www.grammarphobia.com/grammar.html
Sorry, I forgot to mention that the author of “Woe is I” (Pat O’Connor) is a former editor of the NY Times.
I haven’t read the O’Connor book, but the title itself suggests that “Woe is me” is something modern with “me” being a predicate nominative in that sentence, which it most certainly is not. “Me” in “Woe is me” is a dative, as in “give me the book.” If O’Connor doesn’t know the orign of that construction, woe is him.
“[From whence] is another of those grammatical shibboleths, like avoiding a plural verb with none or not splitting one’s infinitives, that are open to linguistic debate, to put it mildly.”
-From WorldWideWords.org
“There’s a lot of disagreement about this one. ‘None’ can be either singular or plural, depending on the meaning you intend and its context in the sentence. ‘None of the pie is left’ is clearly singular. But ‘None of the chocolates is left’ is widely accepted, as is ‘None of the chocolates are left.’ If it’s not obvious to you which it should be, don’t worry; few of your readers will be certain either.”
-From “Common Errors in English”
You think that’s bad? Check out this NYT clunker from a 12/28 article about racism in Maine:
“Such remarks are not unheard of in Maine, the nation’s whitest state, which has fewer black residents — 10,918 in 2006, or less than 1 percent of the population, according to the Census Bureau — than some neighborhoods of Chicago or New York. But nor are they usually so blunt.”
But nor are?
In honor of our language’s death, let me offer up a pair of sports headlines:
Last week’s Times-Picayune ran “Just Deserts” that day after the Saints loss to the Eagles, and today’s NYPost discusses the “Jets’ QB Quandry”. Sigh…
Gil, “just deserts” is correct, because the root is not “dessert” but an older meaning of “desert” derived from the verb “deserve.” Look here:
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/desert
“Quandary” has been misspelled for over 200 years, as is becoming as accepted as “I could care less,” etc. It is still sad to see, of course.
Whoa, I am in the wrong room.
Drew: EPIC GRAMMAR FAIL
I’m a bit late to the game here, but the argument that ‘none can mean “not any of them”‘ is reasonable if you’re talking about a predicate noun, but KLAW was dealing with the subject of the phrase. If you think ‘Them is’ and ‘Them are’ are acceptable sentence constructions, I can only cringe. An easy way to figure out what conjugation you should use when your subject is ‘none’ is to replace it with ‘not one’.