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My impression of this "tedious argument" is that Michael is not the one who
started it.
Collective nouns are one of the major hair-pullers of the English language.
They may be either singular or plural, depending on what message the user
intends to deliver. My interpretation of Michael's "years have" was that he had
learned a lesson from repeated observations of other peoples' poor use of
grammar over a period of years, while your preferred "years has" would have
suggested to me that he had spent those years continuously studying the subject
before coming to his conclusion. Perhaps Michael can tell us which he intended.
For my part, I would rather spend an evening listening to Norm Crosby recordings
than try to correct someone else's usage of a collective noun without a stack of
academic references in my hand.
Gene Kim-Eng
----- Original Message -----
From: "Andrew Warren" <awarren -at- synaptics -dot- com>
> The only thing more boring than a tedious argument over grammar is the tedious
> explanation of a joke. Lucky for us, this conversation is turning out to be
> both.
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