This is becoming rampant. I see headlines every day that have a
singular subject and a plural verb. People, it's not that hard. To show
you what I mean, here's one from today's NY Daily News:
"Daring FDNY rescue save three from NY apartment blaze."
Now, I get why people do this
but it's wrong. They
think -- using the headline above as an example -- that "rescue"
includes more than one fire fighter and therefore the verb should be
plural. But the subject of the sentence is "FDNY" or "FDNY rescue". And
either way, those are singular items. So the verb should be "saves", not
"save".
This comes up with all sorts of words that
imply more than one member. Couple, for instance, comes up all the time
in this way. "Couple finally see Rihanna with clothes on". Nuh-uh. It's
"couple finally
sees..."
Really, it's not
that hard. Singular subjects get singular verbs, and plural subjects get
plural verbs. So many newspapers screw this up. The scary thing is that
I fear the papers' internal style sheets demand it. That's horrifying.
It means there is no one in charge who understands the English language.
And they're, you know,
writers.
Anyway, don't fall for this. Be precise. There's a good lad!
