Why can't you write/speak proper?

You may remember my post from a little while ago about our poor old Australian Broadcasting Corporation suddenly being unable to work out the difference between plural and singular nouns. Well, their latest SCOSE report includes a section that seems to suggest they’re still struggling to understand it …

‘A group of young Aboriginal leaders from Central Australia is calling for an apology after it was asked to leave a backpackers resort in Alice Springs at the weekend.’  

Treating the Aboriginal leaders as a single entity is faintly ridiculous. Anyway, the head of the subject phrase is ‘leaders’, not ‘group’. So it’s better to say:

A group of young Aboriginal leaders from Central Australia are calling for an apology after they were asked to leave…

Again, Aunty appears to be saying that the subject in the first version is the ‘leaders’ and therefore it should be treated as a plural. But the word ‘group’ modifies it, making it singular. Though, in this case you could have used the plural in the second half of the sentence if you’d wanted to:”A group of young Aboriginal leaders from Central Australia is calling for an apology after they were asked to leave a backpackers resort in Alice Springs at the weekend.” No, that’s not clumsy, it’s quite legal.

UPDATE:

I am getting sick and tired of hearing this misuse of singular and plurals. This one tonight on Channel 7 …

“The Chinese government are funding …”

ARGH!!! Freakin’ idiots!!!! The word “government” is singular. You should be saying …

“The Chinese government IS funding …”

For god’s sake you morons, it’s not difficult!!

Turns out poor old Aunty isn’t the only one that can’t get it right. Just tonight on Channel Seven’s “Today Tonight” I heard this clanger:

“… his entire fleet are equipped with cameras.”

What a moron. You’d think a highly paid, fully qualified journalist would get it right. The key object in that phrase is the noun “fleet”, which is singular. Therefore it should have read:

“… his entire fleet is equipped with cameras.”

Now I know “Today Tonight” is hardly the pinnacle of good journalism or quality writing, but this is so simple people! Get it right!

It’s a sad state of affairs that is only growing. Sports reporters have been doing it for ages, but it seems their poor grammar is spreading. For instance, for many years we’ve been listening to rubbish like:

 “Australia are leading …”

Seriously? Even if you’re referring to a sporting team that is a collection of many, the team itself is STILL singular – it’s one team. You should be saying:

“Australia is leading … “

Honestly, people. It’s almost time to start calling out the masses to riot in the streets. Get it right!

I can’t believe what I just heard on our dear Aunty.

“Winds coming down from the artic …”

I’m sorry … from where?

It’s the ARCTIC people!!!!! There’s a whole consonant in there you’re missing. So let’s practice this one:

“Winds from the Arctic … Arctic ….ARCTIC.”

And just for good measure, try “Antarctic” too, and make sure you don’t miss the first C in THAT one!!

Lift your game Aunty.

It seems even the ‘bastion’ of good english in this country can’t quite get it right.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (the ‘aunty’) employs many professional writers (including scores of journalists), and to ensure they all uphold the best traditions of the english language, the ‘aunty’ also has an internal Standing Committee on Spoken English’, affectionately and collectively called SCOSE. Now generally, this body is a very valuable resource within the national broadcaster, and I will probably include a number of excerpts from their reports in this blog in the future. But, alas, even SCOSE gets it wrong.

In one of their recent bulletins to staff, SCOSE made the following comment:

‘A group of agricultural experts believes there may be other options for farmers who might be considering leaving the land.’

This is another example of the same mistake. The head noun is experts (plural). So the verb should be plural believe, not singular believes.

Sorry aunty, that’s wrong. The word ‘group’ modifies the noun ‘experts’ so that the subject becomes a singular – in this case, a group. The test for this sort of sentence is to remove the noun that is being modified. If the sentence were to read just ‘A group believes…’ then we wouldn’t complain. But saying ‘A group believe …’ as SCOSE suggests is wrong. Without the word ‘group’ in there, SCOSE may be correct – in that case it would be ‘Experts believe…’ which would be right. But now we’re talking about a singular ‘group’, not the plural ‘experts’.

The original sentence is correct, and SCOSE is wrong. Unfortunately, this is an error SCOSE has repeated in a couple of their monthly bulletins.

Another example of SCOSE’s occassional misjudgement comes from a much earlier bulletin, and deals with the possessive form of proper nouns that end in the letter ‘s’. In one report, a journalist was berated for referring (as I recall) to “Ben Cousins’ lawyer”. The journalist was told that they should have said (or written) “Ben Cousins’s lawyer”. Bzzzzt. Wrong. It has always been the case in English, that where a person’s name ends in an ‘s’ (such as ‘Cousins’), then it is INCORRECT to add another ‘s’ after the name when turning it into the possessive form. We might say “Ben’s lawyer” (because ‘Ben’ does not end in an ‘s’, so we can add a possessive ‘s’ to it), but it is WRONG to say “Cousins’s lawyer”. Just listen to the buzzing sound it creates – CUZZ-enz-ez!!

We never heard about “Jesus’s disciples”, it was always “Jesus’ disciples”. 

When the name has an ‘s’ on the end and we need to turn it into the possessive form, we DO NOT add an extra ‘s’, just an apostrophe – as the journalist originally and correctly did when he/she used “Ben Cousins’ lawyer”.

Admittedly, there is still something of a grey area when the name ends in an ‘s’ sound, but not necessarily in the letter – such as Louise, Prudence, or Maurice. Purists will argue that here, too, an extra ‘s’ is incorrect (that it should be “Louise’ book”, “Prudence’ teacher” and “Maurice’ lawyer”) , though support here seems to have been waning in recent years.