Hi,
Question 1:
‘Looks are important to many.’
I saw this in the newspaper, and i wonder why ‘looks’ is plural.
Question 2:
A baby is born;
A mother is born;
So is 10 million dust mites.
Shouldn’t it be plural in the third line?
Hence>>>
‘So are 10 million dest mites.’
Thanks.
Hi Rickyrocky,
‘Look’ can also be a noun and in your sentence it is used in the plural. The sentence means that someone’s appearance or the way they look is important.
Yes, the plural ‘are’ is needed in your second sentence.
Alan
(1) Looks used in plural: you could imagine you are looking at a person from different angles, so that she looks like putting on many different looks.
(2) Personally, I’d think ‘So is 10 million dust mites.’ is possible or even better than the orthodox ‘are’ in the place of ‘is’ in this context. Sometimes we can collectively express a plural concept, e.g., ‘10 million dollars is big money.’ Although your example is not equivalent to mine, the poem-like rhythm or arrangement promotes and betters the usage and status of ‘is’ in the position of ‘are’ to give a rhetorical effect:
A baby is born;
A mother is born;
So is 10 million dust mites. (= So is a group of 10 million dust mites.)
Disagree with this - I’m with Alan on this - ‘are’ is correct.
You wouldn’t say ‘10 million babies is born every year’ so why would it be like that for dust mites?
BTW, I’m not sure I like ‘a mother is born’ either, except in a quite ‘poetic’ way, implying that a newborn girl is destined to become a mother and has little choice in it… or maybe I’m just tired.
All this is because that’s ‘poetic’ but not ‘grammatic’.
Poetical grammatical haiku for James:
A baby is born,
A mother smiles wearily
10 mil dust mites ‘are’.
good night.
I am afraid you mixed human babies with mite’s from the beginning. We wouldn’t say ‘10 million babies is born’ because of the size and timing. In the ‘poem’, the subject is dust mites, who are not only small or tiny, but may well be born at the same time with the number of 10 million whose size is still far smaller than 1 human baby!
Okaaay, so now the size of an object is grammatically significant? I did not know that.
So there is billions of atoms in a drop of water? 2000 fleas lives on my dog? (come on, fleas are small too!)
What do we do in that case with really big objects (much bigger than a human baby)? Do they have their own grammar rules too? (is it there is lots of galaxies in the universe, or are… or something else?)
And I’m lost when you talk about ‘timing’ making any difference here. Are you talking about the ‘scan’ of a poem (in which case there is no difference between ‘is’ and ‘are’, especially as the ‘poem’ in question doesn’t really scan anyhow); you seem to suggest that because 10 million dust mites can be born together that makes them singular, whereas 10 million babies are plural because they take longer? (maybe triplets ‘is’ born in that case?)
Sorry, but I fail to see how timing (in a poem or otherwise) would have a bearing on grammar rules. Please enlighten.
Maybe you are suggesting that this poem needs the symmetry of an ‘is’ in each line. I might just about accept that one, but it’s very tenuous and not really what you argued.
Nope, in the end I have to agree with Rickyrocky and Alan and say that ‘is’ is wrong, poetry or prose.
Then again, maybe I’m missing something here, or maybe they have different ideas on Route 6, anything’s possible. Have a nice day!
Unfortunately, when you say ‘There are billions of atoms in a drop of water’, you say it at an atomic level, because you need to show the atomic significance to your student. In this sense, even one atom is not small but very large! When you say '1024 single bytes is an Mb, you say it at the Mb magnitude, so a single byte is very small and insignificant!
Likewise, if you say ‘2000 fleas live on my dog.’, what you take into account is the fleas, not the dog. However, it’s not impossible to say ‘Every 2000 fleas forms a team to huddle on each of my dogs.’, if you like.
By the way, Route 6 is a long way. 
Wow, nice debate, but I’m too tired to look at them now. I’ll be back (in Terminator’s tone).
A baby is born;
A mother is born;
So is 10 million dust mites (collectively grouped into a team and recognising themselves as a single entity.)
[color=blue]
By the way, I believe that Mb is Megabit, I think you meant MB - Megabyte. As far as I know, there are 1024 kilobytes (KB) in a binary megabyte (MB). So that makes … 1048576 single bytes in a binary megabyte. Or (from the MB perspective) An MB is made up of 1048576 single bytes.
Nice try.
Ok, enough of all this, now I have to go back to training the fleas on my dog (shouldn’t be too hard seeing as they are already huddled into handy teams.)
My mistake, Thredder. As you said, that should have been 1024x1024 bytes. I appologize.
So, is the verdict in?
The verdict was in at post #2 as far as I can see.
Use of ‘is’ is grammatically incorrect and it is down to ‘poetic/artistic license!’ - just as it is with other poems and song lyrics that don’t follow correct rules of grammar.
Thanks.