A heartening turn of events
How many people both carry spray paint around, and know that “1 in 5 children are” is incorrect? Precious few, I’d wager. My favorite part is the example of when “are” would be correct.
Update: a lot of you are noticing that it appears to say “soiicited” instead of “solicited.” But that’s just because the paper is tattered and the line of the “L” is interrupted.
Observe:
Photo by infarad @ Flickr
Wordsploded by Mark
September 13th, 2008 at 10:05 pm
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And yet no one noticed “solicited” is spelled wrong?!?!
SJ
14 Sep 08 at 2:13 am
SJ, I noticed it… but it’s just because the paper peeled back there.
Mark
14 Sep 08 at 3:02 am
Isn’t the very expression “1 in 5 children” faulty to begin with? Shouldn’t it be “1 child in 5 is” (and then “2 children in 5″)? Then the is/are argument goes away.
Jolly Bloger
14 Sep 08 at 3:36 am
What I find more interesting is how no one apparently cares about the L that turned into an I.
Superjoe
14 Sep 08 at 5:29 am
Ah, sorry, my cached copy of this page didn’t the show the earlier comments.
Superjoe
14 Sep 08 at 5:30 am
“1 in 5 are” is correct. One in five children is more than one in total, and should be treated as plural.
Or so I was taught, anyway.
wintermute
14 Sep 08 at 9:43 am
looks like there was a debate going on there sometimes ago… LOL!
shaxx
14 Sep 08 at 9:45 am
Maybe it’s me, but didn’t the sign already say “is”?
vincent
14 Sep 08 at 10:05 am
Awesome site! Where’s the RSS feed?
eric:p
14 Sep 08 at 12:46 pm
Yes, Vincent. It was correct to start, someone mistakenly “corrected” it, then someone else corrected it back.
Mark
14 Sep 08 at 1:15 pm
eric:p, the feed is http://wordsplosion.com/feed/
Mark
14 Sep 08 at 1:19 pm
Funny how neither of them touched “soiicited”.
anon
14 Sep 08 at 4:32 pm
Tho I think the black spray paint is right. Because the is/are word relates to the word before it, in this case “children” which is a plural word = children are
MrB
14 Sep 08 at 5:47 pm
@MrB: The verb agrees with the subject of the sentence (1), not the noun immediately before the verb. “5″ is the object of the preposition “in” and thus can’t be the subject of the verb.
Jack
14 Sep 08 at 8:37 pm
MrB, the is/are part relates to the child (i.e. 1) not the children. Rewrite the sentence as “Of 5 children, 1 is solicited…” and the correct form becomes clear.
Mark H
15 Sep 08 at 2:44 am
I’m surprised no one has mentioned that sentences shouldn’t start with numerals.
Justin Tadlock
15 Sep 08 at 1:12 pm
Noted, Justin. Thanks!
Jack and Mark H, great explanations!
Mark
16 Sep 08 at 1:54 pm