Timeline for Plural forms for large numbers [duplicate]
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
9 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Dec 1, 2017 at 12:34 | history | closed |
Edwin Ashworth Mari-Lou A mplungjan jimm101 Davo |
Duplicate of "A total of 10 babies is..." vs. "a total of 10 babies are..." vs. "Ten babies in total are..." | |
| Dec 1, 2017 at 11:24 | comment | added | Spencer | The first construction is much better for the reasons BillJ gave. The second construction is technically grammatical but awkward: "There is a total" implies there might be another total. If you don't want to imply that someone disagrees with your count, don't use that construction. | |
| Dec 1, 2017 at 10:28 | comment | added | BillJ | Different constructions. In the first, "in total" is an adjunct, an optional element that has no bearing on agreement. The complement (displaced subject) of "be" is plural, so the verb should be the plural "are". Things are different in the second example: "total" is probably best treated as a non-count quantificational noun, i.e. it is number-transparent so agreement is determined not by the head but by the noun that is complement of the prep "of". The meaning of "total" is such that the embedded noun (here, "devices") must be plural,thus plural "are" would be correct. | |
| Dec 1, 2017 at 9:09 | review | Close votes | |||
| Dec 1, 2017 at 12:35 | |||||
| Dec 1, 2017 at 9:04 | review | Low quality posts | |||
| Dec 1, 2017 at 12:34 | |||||
| Dec 1, 2017 at 8:55 | answer | added | Michał Kosmulski | timeline score: -1 | |
| Dec 1, 2017 at 8:52 | comment | added | Edwin Ashworth | Possible duplicate of "A total of 10 babies is..." vs. "a total of 10 babies are..." vs. "Ten babies in total are..." and more specifically Should it be 'There is a total of 378 vehicles' or 'There are a total of 378 vehicles'?. | |
| Dec 1, 2017 at 8:49 | review | First posts | |||
| Dec 1, 2017 at 9:32 | |||||
| Dec 1, 2017 at 8:49 | history | asked | mmix | CC BY-SA 3.0 |