Singular/Plural!

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Guest

#110704 Mon, 20 Jun 05 02:28 AM

Which, among the following 2 sentences, is correct?

The media always rubs salt in the wound.

-------------------OR-------------------------

The media always rub salt in the wound.

Media being the plural of 'medium', I guess the second sentence is correct. Correct me if I am wrong.

Thanks,

Arpan

Guest

Plurals

Mister Micawber

#110740 Mon, 20 Jun 05 05:42 AM

I agree with your assessment, although 'media', like 'data', is becoming disconcertingly singular in the media these days.

Mister Micawber

Joined on Wed, Aug 4 2004

Yokohama

Veteran Member (22,611)

'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master-- that's all.'

Plurals

sunilbhasin

#111450 Wed, 22 Jun 05 12:37 PM

In the present case, 'media' actually becomes, sort of, collective noun—signifying the various channels (press, tv, etc.). But if you are using 'media' in the sense of it being the plural of medium, then media takes a singular verb. For example, All the media used by me for this experiment were working equally good. I hope I have been of help.
Sunil Bhasin

sunilbhasin

Joined on Mon, Sep 6 2004

India

New Member (22)

Verbs, Nouns, Plurals, Singular Verbs

YoungCalifornian

#111454 Wed, 22 Jun 05 12:48 PM

You are correct that technically it should probably be "rub", but as Sunil Bhasin says, the word "media" is more often used as a collective noun these days. Even then you run into a bit of a problem as Americans use singular verbs with collective nouns, whereas the British use plural verbs.

YoungCalifornian

Joined on Mon, Feb 14 2005

Los Angeles, California

Regular Member (586)

Verbs, Nouns, Plurals, Singular Verbs

Eimai_Anglos

#111931 Thu, 23 Jun 05 11:56 PM

"..were working equally good".

May I correct you there?

"..were working equally well".

The use of "good" instead of "well" is commonplace but deprecated. It is "street talk".