Grammar Nazis - I need a ruling NYTs by pizmobeach

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Grammar Nazis - I need a ruling NYTs

POSTED BY: PIZMOBEACH
UPDATED: Sunday, November 7, 2010 16:40
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Saturday, November 6, 2010 5:58 AM

... fully loaded, safety off...

http://www.nytimes.com/

EDUCATION LIFE
The China Boom

A wave of Chinese students is choosing American colleges.

and again:

http://www.nytimes.com/indexes/2010/11/06/education/edlife/index.html?
hp

The China Boom
By DAN LEVIN
A wave of Chinese undergraduates is choosing American colleges.

Can't be right, can it??

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Saturday, November 6, 2010 8:11 AM

ECGORDON

There's no place I can be since I found Serenity.

I assume you mean their use of "is" rather than "are." I know it doesn't sound right, but the subject of the sentence, wave, is singular, so they are technically correct.

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Saturday, November 6, 2010 9:00 AM

TWO

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Quote:
Originally posted by pizmobeach:

A wave of Chinese undergraduates is choosing American colleges.

Waves of Chinese undergraduates are choosing American colleges and sidestepping the "is/are" issue.

Edit 1:
Serenity - The Shepherd's Tale.cbr @ http://narod.ru/disk/27064891000/Serenity%20-%20The%20Shepherd%27s%20T
ale.cbr.html
I testify that it is an authentic copy of the very violent world that the Shepherd lives in. (lived in? will live in? There's a grammatical issue for you to ponder.)

Edit 2: per Cybersnark's comment below.

The Joss Whedon script for "Serenity", where Wash lives, is
Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/two

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Saturday, November 6, 2010 9:51 AM

CYBERSNARK

Quote:
Originally posted by two:
the very violent world that the Shepherd lives in. (lived in? will live in? There's a grammatical issue for you to ponder.)

-----
We applied the cortical electrodes but were unable to get a neural reaction from either patient.

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Saturday, November 6, 2010 10:14 AM

KWICKO

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." -- William Casey, Reagan's presidential campaign manager & CIA Director (from first staff meeting in 1981)

Yup, the wave IS choosing American colleges. The students ARE choosing. Or waves ARE choosing.

Students individually ARE choosing, but the group IS choosing.

Think in terms of a sports team: The Dallas Cowboys ARE doing something, but the Dallas Cowboys football team IS doing the same thing. It's all in the grouping... A crowd of people is a crowd of individuals, all of whom are doing something - but the crowd itself IS doing the thing.

The modern definition of "socialist" is anyone who's winning an argument against a tea-bagger.

AURaptor's Greatest Hits:

Friday, September 24, 2010
I hate Obama's America. You're damn right about that.

Friday, May 28, 2010 - 18:26 To President Obama:
Mr. President, you're a god damn, mother fucking liar.
Fuck you, you cock sucking community activist piece of shit.
... go fuck yourself, Mr. President.

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Saturday, November 6, 2010 10:46 AM

PIZMOBEACH

... fully loaded, safety off...

Quote:
Originally posted by ecgordon:
I assume you mean their use of "is" rather than "are." I know it doesn't sound right, but the subject of the sentence, wave, is singular, so they are technically correct.

Thx -

Yes, and I was aware of the rule, er, vaguely, "probably one of those it-sounds-wrong-but-is-right rules." And what *seems* like the plural subject is in the preposition dead zone, "of Chinese students..."

Still, it sounds wrong.

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Saturday, November 6, 2010 10:49 AM

PIZMOBEACH

... fully loaded, safety off...

Quote:
Originally posted by two:
Quote:
Originally posted by pizmobeach:

A wave of Chinese undergraduates is choosing American colleges.
Waves of Chinese undergraduates are choosing American colleges and sidestepping the "is/are" issue.

According to the NYTs it's just a single wave, so that would be inaccurate reporting - details.

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Saturday, November 6, 2010 10:53 AM

PIZMOBEACH

... fully loaded, safety off...

Quote:
Originally posted by Kwicko:
Yup, the wave IS choosing American colleges. The students ARE choosing. Or waves ARE choosing.

Don't be ridiculous, waves can't choose anything, not even the beach they crash up upon - go back to school, preferably near an ocean.

Face it grammar pusses: that's just not good writing. There are some editors for which that sentence would have been not allowed.

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Saturday, November 6, 2010 1:01 PM

KWICKO

Quote:
Originally posted by pizmobeach:
Quote:
Originally posted by Kwicko:
Yup, the wave IS choosing American colleges. The students ARE choosing. Or waves ARE choosing.

Don't be ridiculous, waves can't choose anything, not even the beach they crash up upon - go back to school, preferably near an ocean.

Face it grammar pusses: that's just not good writing. There are some editors for which that sentence would have been not allowed.

Oh, it's not GOOD writing - but it is CORRECT writing. What they needed was some stuffy older editor with some gravitas to step into the breech and come to the fore, and haughtily say, "This sentence, sir, is an abomination; it is, quite simply put, an affront, the likes of which and the kind, up with which we dare not put!"

I think that would have fixed it. Sadly, I was out of the office (note: I wasn't out of the office sadly, nor was I sad to be out of the office) and wasn't consulted. :D

The modern definition of "socialist" is anyone who's winning an argument against a tea-bagger.

AURaptor's Greatest Hits:

Friday, September 24, 2010
I hate Obama's America. You're damn right about that.

Friday, May 28, 2010 - 18:26 To President Obama:
Mr. President, you're a god damn, mother fucking liar.
Fuck you, you cock sucking community activist piece of shit.
... go fuck yourself, Mr. President.

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Sunday, November 7, 2010 3:20 AM

BORIS

As a Speech pathologist and amateur linguist I have to agree with the others who say "is" is right in this context...it does sound funny but it refers to "wave"

Rose S

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Sunday, November 7, 2010 12:29 PM

FLORALBUNNY

I think the source of the confusion may be a primarily British use of a collective noun (e.g. "family") followed by a plural formation, as in "my family are coming for a visit" or even, with reference to a company, "GE are developing a new reactor."

Add to that the deterioration of American English by which agreement in number is ignored, often with comic results. From an ad I hear often on all-night radio: "Millions of men suffer from an enlarged prostate..." I hate to think of the size of that prostate, and hope it never reaches the Left Coast. It's the kind of thing which would discourage one from traveling if it couldn't be found on Google Earth and avoided!

A couple of my friends were put into Remedial English classes when we were in high school. Nobody knew they were merely early adopters of what will soon be Standard English. My friend Lee announced that he had a bad case of the "lays and lies" but look what happened!

bun
I fought the lays and the lays won.

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Sunday, November 7, 2010 1:11 PM

BORIS

All Languages have dialectal differences and English is no exception. I used to be a grammar nazi and would visibly cringe when others used English "inappropriately" however the combination of working with people who have communication difficulty and living in a part of Australia where ungrammatic English is spoken regularly by a large number of locals (e.g. saying "I come over and got it" and "I gone over it") I realise it doesn't really matter how people use the language as long as they get their required message across.

Rose S

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Sunday, November 7, 2010 4:40 PM

FLORALBUNNY

It's a living language, so it changes with use. I had some special problems with ESL clientele and co-workers long ago but the more Spanglish permeates the American Southwest the more one can deal with it. Just please may we have the same understanding of what is an "emergency?" (LOL in retrospect.)

bun

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