The value isn't exactly 1, it's a fraction. But 1 is the only number in the fraction. Should the word degree be singular or plural?
73928
I have seen people say both 0.25 mile and 0.25 miles. Should we use plural or singular for a fraction of a mile?
63393
Possible Duplicate:             When talking about "one and a half" of any object, do we use the subsequent noun in plural or just singular? I'm aware that "A minute and a half" is also correct but I'm looking for the specific "One and a half"-construction here.   So for example, which of the below phrases is correct?     You're one and a half minutes late!   or     You're one and a half minute late!   Is there any difference when using the phrase as an adjective like so: "One-and-a-half-minute recipe"?
78773
The decimal (base 10) number "2" can also be represented as the binary (base 2) number "10".  Let's use binary "10" (equivalent to decimal "2") as an example. I could see a few different ways to go here. Assume that the base doesn't need to be specified, and is understood from the context of the conversation (e.g. two programmers talking about memory addresses would understand that they were using hexadecimal).  It could be "ten", since that is what it looks like. One might even argue that ten, as a concept, refers to a one followed by a zero irrespective of the radix. In other words, ten means "a quantity exactly equal to the base it's represented in".  On the other hand, you could argue that "ten" refers specifically to the quantity; in other words, "1010" in binary, "10" in decimal, and "12" in octal would all be pronounced "ten," and "10" in binary should be pronounced "two".  So how would you pronounce the following numbers?  "10" binary ("2" decimal)  "10" octal ("8" decimal)  "10" hexadecimal ("16" decimal)  "1F" hexadecimal ("31" decimal)
24254
I've been having an argument with a colleague about this sentence, could you please let me know which one of us is correct:     There are no shortage of applications for our product in this   space.   She is convinced that are should be replaced by is, and I think it should stand as it is. Thanks for your help!
28098
Is 2/3 always, sometimes or never plural?  E.g.     1a) 2/3 of the pizza were eaten.     1b) 2/3 of the pizza was eaten.      2a) 2/3 of the visitors were men.     2b) 2/3 of the visitors was men.   I feel that example 1 could go either way but example 2b sounds very wrong.  Is there a rule for this?
22469
Context: Rings.     Are $x \cdot 0 = 0$ and $x \cdot 1 = x$ and $-(-x) = x$ axioms?   Arguably three questions in one, but since they all are properties of the multiplication, I'll try my luck...
29216
Do we say "-1 thing" or "-1 things"?  I am interested in both      two things minus one thing(s)    and      minus/negative one thing(s)
78565
However, if no x satisfies the equation or more than one x does—that   is the solution is not unique—the problem is said not to be well   posed.   In the line(source: ) above it uses "more than one does", but logically and intuitively it should be "more than one do" since "more than one" means two or more, then it is plural. I have tried my best to interpret it as it is, but hardly can I convince myself to make "more than" collocate with "does" as an adv., which may only make it make sense.
42479
This is best illustrated with an example:  Nikkie has 7 children. Sam has no children. Sam thinks Nikkie's kids are cute, but she thinks it would be a lot of work to raise them all together.   Sam: "Your children are so cute, but I think 7 children (1) is or (2) are too many to raise together!"  First of all, I do understand that plural nouns require plural verbs, and yes, "child/children" is a countable noun; thus "Your children are so cute." However, as I think of the meaning of the phrase "7 children" more and more, doesn't it become a sort of measurement like dollars, miles, liters, etc?   Like we say, "1,000,000 dollars is a lot of money," should't we say "7 children is too many to raise together"? Or am I over-analyzing here?
110821
Which of the following sentences is correct?        The number of apples is half the number of pears   The number of apples is half of the number of pears
39165
I am always confused by these tricky-in my opinion-ones as below.  For example,   People love their life or lives. Girls always love their boyfriend or boyfriends. People think of their college or colleges as an enjoyable place or enjoyable places.   My point is that every time I come across such things, I am not sure about whether an objective or a complement has to be plural, every time the subject is plural. Actually, in the ex1 sentence, I think both of them are what I have seen before. However, the rest 2 sentences are not so sure if I let them be singular. In the ex2, every girl has one boyfriend-IN MOST CASES. Also, in the ex3, everyone attends one college.  In that sense, since the subjects are plural, should the objectives or the compliment be pluralized? Or, is it okay if I leave them single as the ex1 sentence? The problem is, though, if I leave them singular they sound like they have ONE boyfriend to share or they go to the same college. It sounds weird to me. Is it just me or is this incorrect?
71249
What is the rule for singular noun objects of plural subjects? For example I and  agree that     They gave their word.   is better than     They gave their words.   To my mind, this is because each has but a single word to give and cannot give more. However, google seems to  on     They gave their life.   vs     They gave their lives.   As you can see in the linked N-gram, the second is far more common than the first. What's going on here? People (cats excluded) only have one life and it seems passing strange that they would be able, let alone willing, to give more.   If pressed, I would claim that the object should only be plural if each of the subjects has many. For example     They called their friends   If each of the "they" in question has only one of whatever object we are talking about I would call it ungrammatical to have that object in the plural form. Am I wrong?    EDIT:  This question was prompted by a comment on  on S&amp;F.SE defending the use of consciousnesses as the plural form of consciousness by referring to . The word was used in this sentence:     Looking for a story where people download their consciousnesses into bodies   It occurred to me that whether or not consciousnesses is correct, it should not be used in that (admittedly bizarre) context since each person only has one consciousness to download. I would have therefore said     Looking for a story where people download their consciousness into bodies   This to me seems like an equivalent sentence to they gave their word or they gave their life. In all three cases I would use the singular form of the noun since each of the subjects can only give (or download as the case may be) one.
86064
1) "The book 'The Three Musketeers' is a wonderful example of..." Here we have a proper noun, a title that happens to end in a plural, and I have no sense that the verb should be plural. "Musketeers"/is seems proper/natural/correct, and 'are' not at all.   However, such certainty begins to wane in other examples: 2) "'The Heidi Chronicles' is a wonderful example of..." doesn't completely shake my confidence, but it moves the needle, at least a little bit. But, practically speaking, I wouldn't have a second thought about correcting a student who used 'are' instead of 'is'.  Here's the one that really bothers me: 3a) " 'The Basement Tapes' are a wonderful example of..." I don't think this sounds any less proper/natural/correct than 3b) " 'The Basement Tapes' is..." In fact, 3a seems less awkward than 3b.  Why?
49633
I'm wondering why I need to say scissors instead of just 'scissor'. Are there any rules about it?  I would think that I only have one scissor, meaning it would be singular and not plural. (That's at least how it is in my native language.)  This would only be one scissor in Danish.    Can anyone tell me why it needs to be plural?
68509
The indefinite article a(n), derives from the old English word an meaning "one". Generally this word only occurs in determiner function before noun phrases which are singular. However, there seem to be some cases where this determiner occurs before plural noun phrases. I say that, but actually these noun phrase seem so bizarre to me, in terms of their structure, that I'm not sure they're definitely noun phrases at all. Here are some examples:   a full three months before we left an amazing two days an awkward ten minutes   Ignoring the article here for a moment, these noun phrases are odd because the adjective is occurring before the numeral. We would normally expect to see:   three full months two amazing days ten awkward minutes   Even given the oddness of the word order in the original phrases, I can see no reason why the normally singular indefinite article is licensed here.   Can anybody give an account of the syntactic structure of these phrases, and/or explain why the semantically singular article is able to be used with such phrases - even if they compulsorily trigger plural verb agreement?  Here is an example of one of these instances which seems to demand a plural verb:   An amazing two million people attend every year. *An amazing two million people attends every year. (ungrammatical)
119381
and  are, respectively, nouns that have only a singular form and nouns that have only a plural form.  In English, we have a handful of pluralia tantum that are mass nouns which take the plural form (e.g. "riches" and "remains"), a whole load of pluralia tantum that refer to things that come in pairs (e.g. "trousers", "sunglasses", "knickers", or "scissors"), and at least one plurale tantum that fits into neither of the above categories ("clothes", meaning multiple items of clothing - it's clear what the hypothetical singular "clothe" would mean, yet it mysteriously isn't a word). Singularia tantum, on the other hand, seem less varied. As far as I can tell, they are all  - things like "information", "milk", and "racism".  One can imagine there being a singulare tantum that is not a mass noun. For example, we can imagine an alternate universe in which it is still correct English to talk about "a dog", but talking about "dogs" in the plural is incorrect and funny in the same way that it is incorrect and funny to talk about a "scissor". It might seem unintuitive to think that such a noun even could exist - surely, if it is not a mass noun, then people would just pluralise it with an "s" on the end like most other words? But the converse argument could just as well be made about countable pluralia tantum, and I still cannot go to a shop and buy a "clothe". Hence my question: do we have any such countable singularia tantum in the language? Have we in the past?
98599
I've been wondering, since these example numbers end with 1, isn't it natural to use the following noun in its singular form?  From what I've been seeing around on the web this does not seem to be the case. All numbers except for 1 are followed by plural nouns.  In some languages you do need to use the singular form with the numbers ending with 1.  How is it supposed to be in English?