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Innate problems in the educational system November 30, 2008

Filed under: Uncategorized — tb4me2000 @ 10:48 am

Okay, so, I realize that I’ve yet to tell you all about York, ore the rest of my Thanksgiving, or my excellent adventure in Covent Garden yesterday, but, you know, I will. As I was browsing The Student Room’s forums today, searching for the differences between American essay formatting and UK essay formatting (apparently, Brits write the question at the top of their paper? What question? Why? Where’d the thesis go? Why can’t you tell what the question is from the thesis?), I came across this post, entitled ‘Microsoft Word Spell Check’. I recount it here mainly because I feel like having a laugh at somebody else’s misguided sense of grammar without shoving it in their faces.

“Mircosoft Word Spell Check

…Is bemusing.

Often when I type ‘ are ‘ it highlights this with wrong and suggests ‘ is ‘.

So a sentence like ….. ‘ Arsenal Football Club ‘ are absolute rubbish … will be changed to ‘ is absolute rubbish ‘.

Who is right?”

Um. ‘Mircosoft’ is. Arsenal Football Club = singular. Is = singular. Match the singular noun with the singular verb, and you get a correct sentence. Brava! Nobody answered one way or the other, btw.
 

3 Responses to “Innate problems in the educational system”

  1. Kathleen Says:

    But I believe the British see certain nouns that we consider singular as plural because they are made up of a group of things/people. E.g. A team is plural because there are multiple people on a team (there’s no I in team, remember!).

  2. tb4me2000 Says:

    Yeah, but there are rules about that in the English language. They just choose not to teach/learn/follow them, and then question when they get it wrong…

  3. tex Says:

    i think he’s just ignorant… or had a very bad elementary school education…


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