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Originally Posted by SeanF
"None" is not arbitrarily singular ...
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I didn't say that it was; just that "is none" is grammatically correct usage. The singular also has the force of etymology behind it, since it comes to us from Old English meaning "not one". With this in mind, many folk are still a little leery of giving "none" an outing in plural form, and I suspect the BA has this in mind when he sticks to the singular - it gives enough of a jolt on reading to suggest that it's deliberate policy rather than accident, but of course I may be wrong.
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Originally Posted by SeanF
In this case, it probably should be "are none," because the implied concept is "there are not any principles" as opposed to "there is not one principle" (or even "there is not any principle," for that matter).
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Fair enough, if you're comfortable with "are none". Some people don't like to use it (I'm one of those), and some still see it as an illiterate usage (I'm not one of those). And when you're writing for a wide audience you do tend to fret a bit about such things, since you'd rather the reader concentrated on your content rather than your grammar. So my suggestion is to just bail out of the infelicitous mix of singular and plural, and recast the sentence so that no-one can take exception to it.
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Originally Posted by SeanF
Which calls to mind that "any" isn't arbitrarily plural, either - "Are there any water in the well?" isn't right, is it?  |
I didn't say that, either. Just that "aren't any" is an unexceptionable construction that gets you out of a stylistic bind.
My point is only this: if the grammar is open to interpretation and argument, you're probably better just rewriting the sentence. Sorry if anyone thought I was being grammatically proscriptive.
Grant Hutchison