When in doubt, do whatever feels right

JUNE CASAGRANDE

That’s it. I give up.

Mark this day on your calendar as the day I learned why striving

to know anything about grammar is a sucker’s game. That’s because I

have just uncovered a bit of proof-positive language trivia that this

whole business is hopeless, useless and best left to masochists.

For years I’ve grappled with the question of whether to say, “a

group of teachers are coming” or “a group of teachers is coming.”

That is, do you conjugate the verb for the singular “group” or for

the plural “teachers”? At times, I thought I knew the answer. At

other times, I defaulted to my pat answer that whatever sounds best

is usually right or at least widely accepted. But I never really

grasped the excruciating mechanics of it until I came across the

following entry in the Chicago Manual of Style.

“A noun functioning as an object is never the subject of the

following verb and does not control the number of the verb. In the

sentence ‘an assembly of strangers was outside,’ the plural noun

‘strangers’ is the object of the preposition ‘of.’ The singular noun

‘assembly is the subject and agrees with the singular verb was.”

Silly me. I thought the answer had more to do with things like

simplicity and clarity. So after chewing on this one a while, I

decided that, to remember it, I could just boil it down to a rule

that whenever you have noun-preposition-noun, always conjugate for

the first one. Don’t get me wrong. I had no intention of actually

following this rule. No way would you have caught me saying, “A bunch

of militant Avon ladies is at the door.” Yet, until I decided to

renounce giving a fig about the English language, it seemed like a

good idea to at least know the rule I planned to break. (What with

being a grammar columnist and all, it seemed the least I could do.)

So I boiled it down to the little noun-preposition-noun

oversimplification above and continued thumbing through my Chicago

Manual of Style.

That’s when I came across this: “A mass noun is one that denotes

something uncountable, either because it is abstract, ‘cowardice,’

‘evidence,’ or because it refers to an indeterminate aggregation of

people or things, ‘the faculty,’ ‘the bourgeoisie.’ As the subject of

a sentence, a mass noun usually takes a singular verb, ‘the

litigation is varied.’ But in a collective sense, it may take either

a singular or a plural verb form, ‘the ruling majority is unlikely to

share power,’ ‘the majority of voters are satisfied.’”

Now, for those of you who zoned out midway through that

brain-numbing blurb, please shake off those pleasant reminiscences of

the “Get Fuzzy” cartoon you read a few minutes ago and tune in to

just the very last part of the above excerpt: “The majority of voters

are satisfied” is OK. Feel free to now visualize a cartoon image of

me sitting over a book, scratching my head like a monkey and

grunting, “Huh?” Now hold that picture for about 15 minutes and you

get the idea of how confused this made me.

For a moment, I was certain I’d caught a contradiction. That

would’ve been sweet, because then I could have just stepped into the

power vacuum, declared myself queen and made up my own rule, which

would have been this: Do whatever you want. But slowly, and with

help, it eventually sank in. These two things are not a

contradiction. Here’s why. In the second blurb, the one with

“majority of voters,” they’re not conjugating the verb for “voters.”

They’re conjugating it for the word “majority.” In fact, the whole

point of the blurb is that in some such cases, it’s OK to treat

things like “majority” as plurals themselves.

Did you tune out again and resume fantasizing about the antics of

Bucky Katt and Satchel and Rob? No problem. I’ll summarize in

language even I can stay tuned in to: When you want to know whether

things like “a group of cartoon cats” should be followed by “is” or

“are,” do whatever you want. I know I will.

* JUNE CASAGRANDE is a freelance writer. She can be reached at

[email protected].