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Discussion Groups / English Usage / August 2009Is or Are
"There is all this greatness around me, but it stops at my skin" Is that sentence correct? Or should it be "there are"?  SignatureZ i n g o - at the beach with the talibans > "There is all this greatness around me, but it stops at my skin" > Is that sentence correct? Yes. > Or should it be "there are"? No--"greatness" is singular. SignatureLes (BrE) > "There is all this greatness around me, but it stops at my skin" > Is that sentence correct? Or should it be "there are"? 1. This sentence is grammatically. Abstract nouns like greatness are "uncountable" thus have no plural forms. (You are right that a rule requires verbs and subjects to agree in number, singular/plural.) 2. Except metaphorically, this sentence makes little sense. Do you really need to say anything at all on this theme? If so, you should try various ways of expressing what you mean. SignatureDon Phillipson Carlsbad Springs (Ottawa, Canada) Don Phillipson: > 1. This sentence is grammatically. What? What? Grammatically what? :-) SignatureMark Brader, Toronto "... people are *always* doing stuff ... msb@vex.net that I wish were typos" --Marcy Thompson > > "There is all this greatness around me, but it stops at my skin" > > Is that sentence correct? Or should it be "there are"? [quoted text clipped - 6 lines] > really need to say anything at all on this theme? If so, you should try > various ways of expressing what you mean. Maybe Zingo is trying to understand somebody else's sentence. -- Jerry Friedman > "There is all this greatness around me, but it stops at my skin" > Is that sentence correct? Or should it be "there are"? Some cases are difficult, but there is nothing in this sentence that is plural. SignatureLars Eighner <http://larseighner.com/> September 5842, 1993 221 days since Rick Warren prayed over Bush's third term. Obama: No hope, no change, more of the same. Yes, he can, but no, he won't. |
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