By Grammar, Singular nouns

Hello One of my grammar books is saying that when a plural noun implies 'a whole amount', it is taken as a single entity and therefore followed by a singular verb. Duration: Three weeks is a long time to walk for an answer. Money: Five hundred dollars is a...

Hi All , Thanks for that wonderful explanation Which( surrounded by commas is used to describe better ) and "that" is used to constrict the selection. This however does not happen in all cases. I wanted to get a little more clarity on this with regards to the question below. Here is a...

You must be googling in Mongolia, Jack -- I get a million and a half hits for 'cars are', and 900,000 for 'cars is'. The latter figure is explained by looking at the grammar of the hits: the subject of 'cars is' is not 'cars', but a singular noun earlier in the sentences. 'Cars is what I need'...

Uh, no offense but their are a whole lot of misconceptions about American English in this thread. The "fag" thing has already been pointed out, so I'll let that one be. "The main difference between British English and American English is that in the former there is perfect grammar even in the...

Hello Jack's question is interesting. I've four grammar books and what they say is in agreement with Mr Mic and Pieanne. So Jack's sentence would be incorrect as a standard expression of English. But it is also true many people online are taking plural seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks,...

In addition consider: The number is infinite. The number of variations is infinite. The number of conspirators is greater than we thought. The number of members is increasing. I do not agree that "are" is proper in any of these examples. It may be used and accepted by some, but number and...

I often see sentences where the object noun or the predicate noun is in disagreement with the subject in number. In most case this kind of imbalanced singular noun is followed by a sentence or clause that explains it. I feel this disagreement would be intentionally used by writers to attract...

Say the right words in the right order. Make subjects and verbs agree in number. Use the correct case for all pronouns. Add "ed" to form the past tense. Add "s" to form plurals. Add "'s" to form possessives. Invert subject and verb in a question. Don't use a countable singular noun without an...

Essay on The Collective Noun by Sophie Johnson Traditionally, the noun that names a collective is considered to be singular. Being singular, the verbial that denotes its act is also singular: (1) The family prays every evening. (2) Australia is playing against Portugal in the final...

Thanks Mr Micawber and moutainhiker, the explanation is clear, I guess the attitude here is important. I was worried because english grammar books don't tell these things and I thought that I was committing a violation of some rule, cause I never see o hear ex like these: "I'm not goig to answer...