Twenty tricky questions 
29.11.2011
Tricky plurals
Forming the plural is not the trickiest problem of the English language, that would probably be the tense system, but there are some difficult areas even here.
For example, take the noun staff. It can be used with both the singular verb form and the plural verb form. It just depends how you see the word. The British see staff as a collection of individual people and therefore normally use the plural verb:
"Our staff are on strike."
However, Americans see staff as a unit, so they use the singular verb:
"Our staff is on strike."
What about other subjects, such as none of, all, some and a/the number of? You might think you know the rules, but our exercise this month will really test your knowledge of this area.
Deborah Capras
