Re: Help with sentence (plural verb)

[Guy Haas <ghaas -at- NETSCAPE -dot- COM>]

At 12:44 PM 10/30/96 -0500, Elsa Kapitan-White wrote:
>Sue Heim asks , which is correct:

>>...more may be required if a high number of records *is* retrieved
>>...more may be required if a high number of records *are* retrieved

>I second Thom's choice that the first is correct.  The second version
>appears correct because the verb is separated from the subject in the
>clause by the intervening plural "records."  The quantity of a "high
>number" has a singular context.


I would like to agree with Tom and Elsa, but there is this nagging
thought:

  We are taught in tech writing not so say "a lot".
  In this example, if we DID say "a lot", it would read

  ...more may be required if a lot of records *are* retrieved

  throwing the focus onto the records.

  Now, now is "a lot of" different from "a number of"?

  What APPEARS to be a prepositional phrase modifying "number"
  is not really.  What we have here is "a high number of"
  modifying "records."  It's not (lapsing into diagramming)

     __number____|____is____\__retrieved__
        \   \
         \   \of
          \   \__records___
           \
            \__high__

  It's more like

    __records____|___are___\___retrieved__
        \ (of)
         \...number...
            \    \___high___
             \__a

  "A high number of" is an adjective, equivalent to "many".

Bottom line, why even SAY "a high number of"?

--g


Guy K. Haas, Software Exegete        ghaas -at- netscape -dot- com
Netscape Communications                    415-937-3773
501 Middlefield                    My opinions are mine,
Mountain View, CA 94043        Netscape's are their own.