For no reason that I can discern, various writers have recently acquired a habit of harnessing a singular verb to a subject made up of two clearly disparate nouns connected with the conjunction and, thus:
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| Link: The Sunday Times, breadcrumb — quotation from ‘Table Talk: Beast, London W1’ |
In addition to ignoring the basic principle of grammatical number, upon which the authorities and textbooks seem to be in agreement, a combination of this kind disrupts the flow by creating confusion in the reader. Are both nouns supposed to be there, or has something gone wrong in the editing process? If the writer had intended to remove one of the nouns, which one? The questions are unanswerable, but the reader is now distracted and, depending on the type of work, may even have lost confidence in the writer’s authority.
The tendency is becoming more widespread in journalism, and it occurs habitually in some students’ written work. This suggests either that the error is being transmitted at school by certain teachers who themselves misunderstand the grammar, or that the error is not been flagged, possibly because of the modern practice of correcting only a quota of mistakes in written work.
the expense and value is
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