Thread: I hope none of you is bidding on this

Originally Posted by p38arover

Me, too!

Originally Posted by vnx205

Me too!

Sorry.

Originally Posted by p38arover

Thanks. I have wondered about the use of the comma there.

I'm not that good on the niceties of grammar.

Now you have presented me with a bit of a problem.

I can see a couple of different ways to interpret the last part of this discussion.

Some of the possibilities are:

• You thought that when I wrote, "Me too!" that I was correcting your punctuation.
• You knew that I meant that I was also interested in the whodunnit, but saw an opportunity to draw attention to the ambiguity of my response.
• Since I rarely see errors in your punctuation, grammar and spelling, the second part of your response is tongue in cheek.
• That given your interest in the rules and conventions of the English language, your comments can be just taken at face value.

Now to make my problem even worse, I am not sure what I would prefer; to be made aware of how I should have interpreted your response or to be allowed to continue to consider any one or maybe some combination of those possibilities is correct.

Originally Posted by vnx205

Now you have presented me with a bit of a problem.

I can see a couple of different ways to interpret the last part of this discussion.

Some of the possibilities are:

• You thought that when I wrote, "Me too!" that I was correcting your punctuation.
• You knew that I meant that I was also interested in the whodunnit, but saw an opportunity to draw attention to the ambiguity of my response.
• Since I rarely see errors in your punctuation, grammar and spelling, the second part of your response is tongue in cheek.
• That given your interest in the rules and conventions of the English language, your comments can be just taken at face value.

Now to make my problem even worse, I am not sure what I would prefer; to be made aware of how I should have interpreted your response or to be allowed to continue to consider any one or maybe some combination of those possibilities is correct.

Actually, I did think you were correcting it. It hadn't dawned on me that you were interested in the results of Scouse's "investigation".

Re grammar, I'm happy to take corrections. I'm learning all the time. If I see something I don't understand, I do look it up on the 'Net (I no longer have any English textbooks). I will have to look up the gerund.

As I indicated in an earlier post, English was my worst subject at school. Back in the early Seventies, I moved from the field to HO. My boss at the time, George Kennedy, was a Polish immigrant. George had to read and sign off on all correspondence from our section before it could be sent. He corrected many of my telexes before transmission and improved my grammar. The corrections weren't major but there was rarely a time when a document would get through without being amended.

The thing was that George explained why he made the change(s). This was important.

One I particularly remember was differentiating between the the use of "owing to" and "due to".

It wasn't until I started to work for George that I learned how my grammar could be improved. I'm still not that good but I do try to make my sentences understandable. I don't always succeed.

I was always good at spelling but I didn't take much notice of grammar at school. To be honest, I probably disliked English for most of high school - until we got a new teacher who made it interesting.

As an aside, those who did the Electronics and Communications course at North Sydney Tech in the Seventies may have had George as a lecturer and many will have used his textbook "Electronic Communications Systems" in the course of their studies.

Originally Posted by ivery819

I would have thought that 'none of' in this case was used in the adjectival sense and therefore would not influence the verb.

No, "none" is definitely the subject.

The sentence can be reconstructed to illustrate the point.
"I hope none of you are bidding on this" or without the adjectival sense;
"I hope you are bidding on this"
Whether the 'you' is singular or plural will depend on the reader's interpretation or the writer's original intention. In this case Ron has flagged that he meant the plural by using 'are' instead of 'is' .

As no-one has picked me up on my earlier explanation, I will offer a small modification to what I said before about Ron's grammar.

The more unkind of you may interpret that last sentence as, "I got it wrong".

That would be a little unfair though.

The fact is that Ron might have been wrong but it has nothing to do with whether "you" or "youse" is singular or plural.

The subject of the verb in Ron's heading is "none", not "you".

The issue is whether "none" is singular or plural. It can be either and in this example both are possibilities.

As someone who learned most of his grammar before a lot of members of AULRO were born I tend to automatically think of "none" as being singular; a bit like "not one".

However there are circumstances where it can mean "not any", in which case it would be plural.

So if Ron's heading was expressing a hope that not a single AULRO member was bidding, then "none" is singular and the verb should be "is bidding".

However the topic could be read to mean that he hopes there weren't any members bidding, in which case "are bidding" would be correct.

Perhaps that is what you were trying to explain earlier Ron, when you said "you" was plural. It obviously was, but that's not relevant.

Anyone who doesn't follow that explanation or who doesn't believe me can check in this article:
And Then There Were None
or in one the 1,670,000 that come up if you Google (google?) "grammar none agreement".

So, the ball is back in your court Ron. Were you hoping that not a single member would bid or that no members would bid?

sorry,,

Originally Posted by Pedro_The_Swift

sorry,,

That's OK.

This is one of those situations where I felt it was more important for me to offer the apology (of sorts) than it was for anyone to understand or care about it.

None of the posts on the forum is actually compulsory reading. A fact for which I'm sure a lot of us are often eternally grateful.

Its all good,, was only a poor attempt at humour anyway,,,

We all have our niches (OMG!) of expertise,,
and its always good to read posts from people who are passionate about things.

Were you an English teacher, VNX?

Ron (just finished watching another episode of The Adventure of English)

Originally Posted by p38arover

Were you an English teacher, VNX?

Ron (just finished watching another episode of The Adventure of English)

I had planned to keep it quiet because there seem to be so many people with some sort of prejudice against people with university degrees in general and teachers in particular.
A few years ago an acquaintance called around to see me when I had the Series III engine suspended above the engine bay after having just fitted rings and bearings. His comment was typical of the instinctive reaction of a lot of people. He said something like, "But you can't do that. You're an English teacher."

I taught English for 34 years as well as some History and a bit of Computer Studies, Photography and fibreglass kayak building.

I am currently teaching 0.5 Computer Studies and Darkroom Photography.

Fortunately most people have become bored with this thread (like Pedro ) and have stopped reading it, so you will probably be the only one who knows my dark secret.