Wednesday, September 21, 2005

reader query

Every year there was more traffic, more people, more houses.

I think the verb should be "were." What do you think?

11 comments:

John Burzynski said...

'Was' is for 1st or 3rd person singular (I/he/she/it was), 'were is for others (you, we, they were).

'Were' should be correct.

A better structure for the sentence would also seem to be, "More people, more traffic, and more houses were there every year."

Joe said...

"Every year there were more traffic" is a terrible verbal speed bump. To me, that's clearly not right, even if it is correct.

"Was" sounds better, even if it's grammatically incorrect. And when style conflicts with grammar, I go with John's rule... restructure the sentence.

(Point of clarification: British English does use plurals for collective nouns. Is "traffic" a collective noun? Not that it matters in American English...)

Tippecanoe said...

I think you have to include the rest of the sentence that is implied:

"Every year there was more traffic, more people, more houses than the year before."

In that case, "year" is singular.

Jim Wetzel said...

The singular or plural status of "year" is irrelevant. The verb is "is" in some form ("was" or "were"), and the subjects are "traffic," "people," and "houses."

"Were" is correct here because of the plural nature of the list of subjects. I also agree that "were" is awkward. The awkwardness is caused by the order of the list. A coward, such as myself, might evade the issue by writing, "Every year there were more houses, more people, and more traffic than the year before."

Hugh said...

Wonderful discussion. Given the contents of the list you could have a singular subject, if the items are all connected

Faith, Hope, and Charity were the values espoused by the commune.

Faith, Hope, and Charity was scheduled to play Roncalli tonight but the game was rained out.

I know it's a bit of a cop-out, but that's what's wonderful about English.

Bonus Question: Yes, those are two Catholic schools. Who or what was (were?) Roncalli?

John Burzynski said...

HUGH:

Cardinal Angelo Roncalli, who later took the name of Pope John XXIII...

Tippecanoe said...

I think I'm going to defer to Rachel on the "traffic" point, and Bartleby on the identification of the correct subject.

"Traffic" is causing all of the trouble.

Is this from a test?

Jim Wetzel said...

I, too, defer to Rachel about the "traffic." It would be too difficult to make the pen write, the fingers type, or the tongue pronounce: there were more traffic, etc.

If this was a test, I hope I get to drop my lowest score for the semester.

TeacherRefPoet said...

A bit windy, but nobody has suggested this correct sentence:

"Ever;y year, there was more traffic, were more people, were more houses."

Jim Wetzel said...

Or ...

Arrrrrgggghh! She couldn't stand it any more! There was no respite. Every year! More people! More houses! More traffic! It was driving her insane! Soon ... she'd be reduced to a quivering, NASCAR-watching blob!!!

On second thought, maybe that's not an improvement.

Hugh said...

Or this:

SPRAWL SUX! Mie L33T ROXORS!

Only if you're writing on the internets, I guess.

John B: Somehow, I guessed that you'd get that. . . . :-)