My answer to todays grammar question about the following sentence: The media has tremendous influence on elections in the U.S. ***** The issue I had hoped folks would notice is subject-verb agreement, although I am always surprised at the variety of issues my friends here raise on any given sentence. [Note to self: Avoid sample sentences with a political bent. It tends to distract readers from the grammar.] * Abbreviating U.S. is fine. The period in the abbreviation serves also as the period (full stop) to end the sentence--no need to double them up. * Influence does not require an article, although it would be okay grammatically to add a before tremendous. * The question is: Is media a singular or plural noun? Its from the Latin, of course, and therefore has historically been considered the plural form of medium. Thats why it is often considered strictly a plural and stodgy grammarians insist on its use with plural verbs only. But English speakers never got the memo from grammarians and have continued to use it as singular, preferring media is to media are, media was to media were and media has to media have This isnt a recent issue, by the way. In the 1920s, print publications used media is just as often as they used media are. Googling media is produced just over 12 billion hits, while media are got me just under 11 billion, indicating that popular use prefers media as a singular noun by a hair. Dictionaries and most style guides now recommend using media as a collective noun, meaning it can be used as a singular when referring to the media as a collective entity, but as a plural when referring to the individual members composing it. Thus, you could say, The media are arriving by bus, car, and train, but The media is a factor in any election. Therefore, though some traditionalists would disagree, the sentence above is correct as it is.
Posted on: Fri, 17 Jan 2014 21:37:34 +0000
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