'One or many' looks at collective agreements.
English verbs are usually rather simpler than in many other languages ~ but we still need to check we avoid using a plural verb with a singular subject, for instance. That may sound straightforward, but when the subject is a singular but Collective noun, many of us get 'interference' and put a plural verb after it.
You may be surprised how tricky it can be to get these right every time!
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No problems here.
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The 'number of bombs' is singular (whatever the actual number is: it could be just one piece, or maybe several dozen).
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The verbs are fine each time, but 'me and Chris' is terrible! No speaker of decent English would ever think of saying 'me is staying', so 'me and anyone else are staying' is equally wrong (though plenty of people, particularly children and speakers of non-standard English) say similar things every day ~ alas!
It should of course be: 'Chris and I'. |
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'The Government' is singular and needs a singular verb; bread prices are plural, so part (B) is OK.
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'Dad was saying ...' is OK; but 'mum and dad [plural] WERE saying ...'.
The cast of any show, meanwhile, is a collective entity, and therefore singular. |
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The Company is a singular entity (so 'themselves' is wrong), but 'Jo(e) Public' is a singular ~ imaginary, representative ~ person, so the singular verb 'can' is OK in Part B. (Actually, of course, 'can' would have been formed exactly the same in its 3rd-person singular or plural version anyway; but at least Part B works as it should!)
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The correct possessive after 'child' should be 'his or her' (or 'its', if we don't know the individual child's gender; but it somehow sounds very ugly to say 'no child should cry just because it's lost its toy) ~ so Part A was faulty.
In part B, 'Uncle Marcus and my father WERE ..' would be better. |
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Doubtless there were several stamps, but the collection is singular. In Part B, 'the police' is a singular noun but usually treated as plural, so this version is widely acceptable.
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The Press (or any subsection of it) is singular; law and order, while often treated as a single concept, still consists of two nouns and is therefore compound and plural.
The correct version should read: 'The press is claiming ... that law and order are reaching ...'. |
(See what we mean? The overall meaning's clear, but the grammar is trickier than you might think!)