I am trying to come up with a title for a journal. I am thinking about
Mycoviruses as a powerful tool to study plant diseases.
I am concerned whether "a powerful tool" would make it incorrect as mycoviruses are plural.
Is this grammatically correct?
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1It depends. You can say "crowds are a powerful tool" or "crowds are powerful tools" - do you mean collectively, mycoviruses as one tool, or individually, as many tools?– DavoCommented Oct 30, 2020 at 20:27
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1It is unusual to put a subjective adjective in the title of journal. Objective ones such as medical, chemical, physical are normal but powerful seems unnecessarily restrictive and devoid of sufficiently precise meaning. I do not see mycoviruses as a tool for study. They may be a tool for control of fungi, but not study. I suggest a simpler title - Mycoviruses and Plant Diseases– AntonCommented Oct 30, 2020 at 23:46
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1 Answer
There is nothing wrong with it. Two nouns are never grammatically required to agree with each other in number; instead, the grammatical number of a noun is supposed to make logical sense (or in some set phrases, follow conventional usage). It makes logical sense to say that “mycoviruses” (plural, because you are speaking of multiple viruses) constitute a “powerful tool” (singular, because you are describing them as a single tool).
answered Oct 30, 2020 at 20:21
