Find the Error 16
(Extract adapted from an article in a local newpaper's 'What's On?' guide)
What kind of mistake do you see? (Choose one:)
- apostrophes
- articles
- doesn't make sense
- punctuation
- singular / plural
- spelling
Answer: singular / plural
There is a mix-up in the first sentence to do with using 'there are' instead of
'there is'. It should read: '
there is an unbelievable variety of things to do'.
This mistake is understandable, because the second part of the sentence
'variety of things to do' appears to indicate more than one thing and
makes the sentence look plural. Therefore the writer uses the plural verb 'are'
(from verb 'to be') with 'there' to form the structure 'there are
' However,
before the plural bit we can see a singular article 'an' which overrides the end
of the sentence and tells us that the subject of the sentence 'unbelievable
variety of things to do' is in actual fact singular. The main noun in this
sentence 'variety' is singular, despite the fact that it means many things.
We would say 'a variety of chocolates' (with singular article 'a') not 'some
variety of chocolates' (with plural determiner 'some'). Confusing, eh?
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