Today we\u2019ll look at three perplexing sentences that are the verbal equivalent of optical illusions.<\/p>\n
\u2022\u00a0Every man and woman has arrived<\/em>. Why\u00a0has<\/em>? The phrase\u00a0man and woman<\/em>\u00a0denotes a plural subject. Consider the following grammatically sound sentence:\u00a0The happy man and woman\u00a0<\/em>have<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0arrived<\/em>.\u00a0Every<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0happy\u00a0<\/em>both function as adjectives that modify\u00a0man and woman<\/em>\u00a0in these almost identical sentences. But\u00a0every\u00a0<\/em>is so powerfully singular that it forces us to say\u00a0has<\/em>, despite the plural subject.<\/p>\n \u2022\u00a0M<\/em>ore than one person<\/em>\u00a0was involved<\/em>. Why\u00a0was<\/em>? Doesn\u2019t\u00a0more\u00a0<\/em>mean at least two? Yet there is no English scholar we know of who would change the verb to \u201cwere<\/em>\u00a0involved,\u201d even though we would say, \u201cMore were involved than one person.\u201d<\/p>\n Reference books do not offer much help with this conundrum, and the Internet is no help at all. But John B. Bremner\u2019s\u00a0Words on Words<\/em>\u00a0and Theodore M. Bernstein\u2019s\u00a0The Careful Writer<\/em>\u00a0both address the topic. Bremner claims that\u00a0more than<\/em>\u00a0is an adverbial phrase modifying the adjective\u00a0one<\/em>, \u201cwhich is singular and therefore qualifies a singular noun, which takes a singular verb.\u201d That explanation might fly in the rarefied air of academia, but to accept it we must ignore the inconvenient fact that\u00a0more than one person\u00a0<\/em>means \u201ctwo or more persons,\u201d and would seem to require the plural verb\u00a0were involved<\/em>.<\/p>\n Bernstein doesn\u2019t try to justify\u00a0More than one person\u00a0<\/em>was involved<\/em>\u00a0as good grammar, just \u201cgood idiom.\u201d He says \u201cwas\u00a0<\/em>involved\u201d is an example of\u00a0attraction<\/em>, a linguistic term that accounts for certain incorrect word choices: \u201cThe verb is singular \u2018by attraction\u2019 to the\u00a0one\u00a0<\/em>and to the subsequent noun [person<\/em>].\u201d Since \u201cgood idioms\u201d often defy logic, we lean toward Bernstein\u2019s interpretation.<\/p>\n \u2022\u00a0All but one ship\u00a0<\/em>was<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0sunk<\/em>. Another example of \u201cgood idiom.\u201d The principles that apply to\u00a0more than one\u00a0<\/em>also apply to\u00a0all but one<\/em>. If we separate\u00a0all<\/em>\u00a0from\u00a0but one<\/em>, the verb becomes plural:\u00a0Of the five ships, all\u00a0<\/em>were\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>sunk but one<\/em>.<\/p>\n One is free to endorse elaborate justifications for the validity of\u00a0More than\u00a0<\/em>(or\u00a0All but<\/em>)\u00a0one person\u00a0<\/em>was\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>involved<\/em>. But it is just as reasonable to conclude that this oddity is nothing more than institutionalized error\u2014people have been saying it wrong for so long that we\u2019ve become used to it, and\u00a0More than one person\u00a0<\/em>were<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0involved<\/em>, the logical construction, sounds wrong. We see institutionalized error on the march today in ungrammatical usages like \u201ceach of them were here,\u201d \u201cneither of you are right,\u201d and \u201ca person should do their best,\u201d all of which we suspect will be standard English in a decade or two, despite the anguished screams of purists.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Today we\u2019ll look at three perplexing sentences that are the verbal equivalent of optical illusions. \u2022\u00a0Every man and woman has arrived. Why\u00a0has? The phrase\u00a0man and woman\u00a0denotes a plural subject. Consider the following grammatically sound sentence:\u00a0The happy man and woman\u00a0have\u00a0arrived.\u00a0Every\u00a0and\u00a0happy\u00a0both function as adjectives that modify\u00a0man and woman\u00a0in these almost identical sentences. But\u00a0every\u00a0is so powerfully singular that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,12,26,43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adjectives-adverbs","category-effective-writing","category-singular-vs-plural","category-subject-and-verb-agreement"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1686"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1686"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1686\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}