I know Black Friday was a while ago now, and you’re probably not too interested in my exact location a month and half ago. However, I will brazenly pretend that you are and tell you that I was up in the Bay Area that day — which also happened to be my birthday. (It is not pleasant to have people refer to your birthday with the same name as the days that saw the Fisk-Gould market-cornering scheme, the slaughter of Iranian protesters, and the invasion of the Falkland Islands. Then again, my birthdays have a tendency to involve some unpleasantness, such as the year my friends stole my bed as part of an elaborate birthday prank, the year my friends threw eggs at me as part of a less elaborate birthday prank, or the year that my friend threw a single egg at me as an allusion to the previous year’s egg-throwing. So I suppose if someone’s birthday has to be called Black Friday, I can take one for the team.)
In honor of my ability to remain alive for a quarter-century, my dear friends fed me the Old Bay ice cream they had made and took me to the best place for Black Friday shopping: a used bookstore. There, in the extreme bargain section at the front of the store, I saw The World According to Clarkson, a book written by Jeremy Clarkson, the overbearing but hilarious co-host of Top Gear. And this is what, at long last, leads to the grammar portion of the post.
I finally got around to reading the book, and found this sentence in it:
(1) None of the people who run it is getting any sleep.
If you are in the newspaper biz, you probably thought nothing of that sentence, aside from some minor curiosity about what it refers to. (It’s the European Union, if you were concerned.) But to me, the sentence was a fingernail caressed gently along a chalkboard: I could stand it, but I wanted badly to read the sentence with are replacing is. I didn’t dare; Clarkson’s authoritative voice rumbled through my mind, dissuading me from disagreeing with his usage. Yet well after I finished reading the sentence, the question still smoldered in my head. Is Clarkson right? Is none singular, as he and many others make it, or plural, as I’d prefer to?
As is nearly always the case here at Motivated Grammar, the answer is that both are fine and have been for a long time. (“Home of the friendly grammarians!” could be the blog slogan just as easily as “Prescriptivism Must Die!”) We can start our analysis by quickly checking in with other grammarians — and, stunningly, they are fairly quiet about the issue. In fact, pretty much everyone agrees on three basic facts:
- when none quantifies a singular or mass noun, only singular agreement is acceptable
- when none quantifies a plural noun, both singular and plural agreements are acceptable.
- when none doesn’t quantify anything, both agreements are acceptable.
To check how this jibes with real English usage, I ran some quick Google searches (drawing the numbers from page 10 of the results to improve accuracy):
| is | are | |
| None of the food | 14200 | 3 |
| None of the projects | 2730 | 2870 |
| None | 2350000 | 2990000 |
Hooray! We’ve got a match! And what’s more, the singular and plural usages are basically equally common. Sure looks like the facts are right.
But not everyone agrees with this; some claim that none must always be singular. The source of this belief is the canard that none is a contraction of not one, which must be singular. Now, supposing that were the case, it is argued that (2a) being unacceptable would imply (2b) is unacceptable as well:
(2a) ?? Not one of the readers are interested in this.
(2b) None of the readers are interested in this.
But that’s just wrong, at every step of the way. First off, the fact that two words are semantically equivalent does not mean that they have the same grammar. This is a common misconception, which I addressed in a previous post on different than. The key point is that there are many semantically equivalent constructions in English that do not employ the same grammar. Therefore, even if not one and none were semantically equivalent, it wouldn’t mean they were both syntactically singular. And as it turns out, not one and none aren’t quite the same semantically anyway:
(3a) *Not one of the blind mice can see each other.
(3b) None of the blind mice can see each other.
If you’ll excuse a bit of linguistic terminology, (3b) shows that none can take the reciprocal anaphor each other. An anaphor is a pronoun that refers to some other entity in the discourse, and a reciprocal anaphor is one that refers to each of the members of that entity. There are two reciprocals in English: each other or one another. So when you say Bill and Linda like each other, you’re saying that Bill likes Linda and that Linda likes Bill. You can’t use a reciprocal anaphor unless its referent can be thought of as a plural set. This is why you can’t say *I like each other. (You’d use myself, a reflexive anaphor, instead.) None can be thought as a plural set, but not one apparently can’t. They’re not quite the same.
The fact that you can’t use a reciprocal with not one but can with none is compelling evidence that none isn’t just a contraction of not one. Yes, not one and none have the same source; according to MWDEU, Old English nan ‘none’ formed from of ne an ‘not one’. But shared history does not make none and not one the same any more than shared ancestors make two species the same.
Anyway, putting that canard behind us, MWDEU cites plural usage all the way back to King Alfred the Great in 888. In fact, none can always be plural, except in a situation like (4):
(4) None of the food has/*have gone bad.
Otherwise, you’re free to choose between singular and plural. I think I almost always use the plural, but it’s up to you to decide how you want to treat it.
Summary: None can be singular or plural, unless it quantifies a singular or mass noun. Don’t believe anyone who says none has to be singular because it’s a contraction of not one. Both none of the meals is and none of the meals are are okay, and both none is and none are are okay. *None of the stuff are is ungrammatical, though.
Motivated Grammar 
114 comments
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January 8, 2009 at 7:27 am
goofy
Well done, as usual. Here’s an Old English citation with plural agreement, from the OED:
lOE Anglo-Saxon Chron. (Laud) (Peterborough interpolation) anno 1070, Beleaf þær nan buton an munec.
January 9, 2009 at 10:40 am
Daniel
Oddly, I once had someone explain to me that Alfred the Great’s use of a plural “none” did nothing to undermine the “fact” that “none” must be singular. After all, Anglo-Saxon doesn’t even properly count as English, so he wasn’t really speaking English and thus his usage was irrelevant.
I will concede that it would be a valid line of argument had plural none died out in Alfred’s time. Of course, then there’s the pesky little fact that it didn’t.
January 9, 2009 at 2:36 pm
goofy
Yes, just because it was used in Old English doesn’t mean it’s correct in Modern English. The point of mentioning the Old English data is to show just how long it has been part of English, as you say. Plus, I like Old English. :)
August 2, 2009 at 6:11 am
Denise
My daughter and I laughed our heads off while we were reading this article. Who wrote it? And – we are happy to hear that we are both right.
September 5, 2009 at 11:31 am
Carolyn
My husband and I both thought “none is” was absolutely correct and that any variance was a sign that in fact our culture was going to h*ll in a hand basket. So, imagine our amazement… plural is correct, too. Query: Do I need the word “usage” in that sentence, so it would read, “… plural usage is correct, too?”
October 19, 2009 at 6:00 pm
Rich Baum
Hi Gabe,
Tonight my mom and I heard “None of us are free” on the radio by Solomon Burke. “That’s grammatically incorrect, you know,” she said. She insisted “none” is always singular. It just didn’t sound right to me (my English teacher in grade school actually instructed us to use commas when it “just feels right”).
Anyway, after reviewing a number of informal and opinionated discussions on the matter, I was inspired after coming across your post. Your explanation reminded me of mathematical proofs I did back in junior high. It made perfect sense and ultimately convinced moms that “none” can be plural. The part on reciprocal anaphors (“anaphor”: highlighted while typing as misspelled!) sealed the deal for me.
Thanks for the distinguished contribution to this “word-nerd” dilemma.
Props major,
Rich
October 28, 2009 at 11:28 pm
Gabe
Carolyn: I’d think either form is fine.
Rich: Thanks. Glad to be of service. I have to admit that in the case you mentioned by Solomon Burke, I actually do (weakly) prefer “none of us is free”. How strange!
November 11, 2009 at 3:25 am
Dave
This is so wrong.
None must always be followed by a singular noun. It sounds odd because we are so used to hearing so many people getting it wrong.
November 11, 2009 at 11:26 am
Gabe
Dave: Why must “none” be followed by a singular noun? Where is the flaw or flaws in the above argument? You can’t just declare it so.
November 24, 2009 at 12:48 pm
James
Re: Dave’s fiat
Surely Dave means ‘a singular verb’? Where is his argument? (There is none.)
By contrast, the case this blog presents is very tight (in particular the bit showing how the grammar of ‘none’ and ‘not one’ differs).
It’s not just because someone told you that ‘none’ has to govern a singular *verb* that it’s necessarily so. (I’m even one who tends to make it singular, no doubt for the same reason as Dave).
December 30, 2009 at 12:05 pm
richdesign
Great post. Thanks!
Who is it that actually decides what is and what isn’t correct grammar anyway? If half the population uses a particular form then surely it qualifies as correct. If it didn’t, we’d all still be speaking Old English.
I looked this up because I was writing this sentence: “Please have one last close look at it for any changes, but if there is none then this one is ready to go.” I remembered hearing once that ‘none’ is always singular, but it just sounds plain wrong. To my mind, if it sounds wrong to most reasonably educated people then it is, because I will create that impression in the majority of those people.
Anyway, most people couldn’t give a toss – the same email audience had already baulked at a discussion of split infinitives – but the debate is most of the fun! :-)
January 2, 2010 at 10:55 pm
ronald
Lets take this sentence as an example where an observer is looking at a pool of cars and notes that there is no red car in the pool.He then says…
NONE OF THE CARS IS RED
He sees more than one car and hence he had to say “cars”. There isnt even one car which is red. It it very clear that the observer tries to say, perhaps in a suprise, that not even one car is red.
Whenever NONE is used,the fact remains that “not even one”is referred ( may not be intended but the fact remains so) and hence the idea of plural for none is not valid. I cant see why anyone wants to say NONE OF THE APPLES ARE BAD when not one apple is bad. If more that one apple were bad, then you simply cannot say NONE OF THE APPLE IS BAD. None is exclusive to singular. Feel free to comment folks.
January 3, 2010 at 8:50 am
richdesign
Unless there is a grammatical reason why “none” can’t be the object of a sentence, then the answer to, “How many red cars are there?” would be, “There ARE none,” because in this case “none” is shorthand for “no red cars.” But maybe, “There are none” is a major grammatical no-no. Let’s see…
January 3, 2010 at 9:11 am
Gabe
ronald: If your argument is that the subject of “None of the cars is red” manes “not even one”, then the subject picks out zero cars. Zero may not be plural, but it’s not singular either.
Also, for caring so much about “is”/”are”, you are remarkably unconcerned with the grammar and spelling in your comment. I don’t mean that snarkily or offensively; it’s just that all the errors make it incredibly difficult to understand what you are saying.
January 7, 2010 at 3:46 am
G
Interestingly, Google has 80 pages for “none of the women is” but 16,000,000 (200,000 times more) for “none of the women are”.
January 11, 2010 at 9:52 am
PeterPatnter
Although Ronald’s spelling, punctuation etc. are imperfect, I think he’s the first to suggest that the very best reason to treat “none” as singular is NOT the assumption that “none” came to us by abbreviation from “not one” — but rather that zero is even smaller than one. Imagine a simple monotonic progression:
fifty thousand, … eight thousand, … nineteen hundred, … three hundred, … ninety-two, … twelve, … five, … one, zero. (Let’s save “minus four” for another day!)
For the first eight of the listed numbers, the corresponding forms of “to be” in present tense must be (I think!): are, are, are, are, are, are, are, and is. Why should the next form turn tail and start back up to plural?
Surely the justification cannot be Gabe’s dictatorial (even though we do love him) pronouncement, “Zero may not be plural, but it’s not singular either.” Oh yeah? On what basis? It is even smaller than one, and that’s good enough for ME to conclude that it IS singular.
Gabe goes on to reason based on whether “none” is “quantifying a plural noun”. In my ‘umble hopinion, it cannot. That’s just the same mistake coming back around from the opposite direction.
He gives examples: *Not one of the blind mice can see each other. None of the blind mice can see each other.” I submit that both these quotes are examples of shoddy writing. It is wrong too write EITHER “Not one … can see each other” OR “None … can see each other.” As to the first example, it’s obviously poppycock to write, “None … can see each other.” Here there is no proper antecedent for “each other”.
The reason (are you seated?) is that the word “none”, referring as it does to zero — which is even smaller than one — is singular. It is necessary to rewrite thus: “There are three [I presume] blind mice. Because they are blind, they cannot see each other. Not even one of the blind mice can see ANY OF THE OTHER blind mice — or indeed any mice that are, or mouse that is, sighted. Right, none of the blind mice IS able to see any of the other blind mice, or any mice that are able to see, or for that matter anything whatsoever.”
Another interesting comment has been made by RichDesign, who wrote: “[T]he answer to, “How many red cars are there?” would be, “There ARE none,” because in this case “none” is shorthand for “no red cars.”
Thus in my view RichDesign’s argument is based upon another error: “no … cars”.
I respectfully submit that there is a vanishingly small number of cases in which such a construction might be valid. He almost surely should have written “no red car”. While trying to prove the plural, he proved the singular.
Thanks for listening! -Peter
January 11, 2010 at 10:12 am
PeterPatnter
P. S.: Yes, I am VERY SORRY that I wrote “It is wrong too write”. Why is there no “last-minute edit” function in this website? Of course I meant to write: “It is wrong to write”. -p.
January 11, 2010 at 1:38 pm
Poethius
To my friend PeterPatnter: Too wrongs don’t make a write.
To Gabe: I agree with your conclusion, but I have some doubts about your process.
If you had simply reported your Google statistics, you would have been doing a straightforward descriptive investigation of actual usage. Clearly, “none” is used in both singular and plural contexts. Mission accomplished.
But you also found it necessary to conduct a poll of grammarians and formulate their consensus. Why? You also found it necessary to rebut the etymological argument (“none” = “not one”). Why? Is it important to you to have an accepted generalization behind your conclusions? Does the etymology matter?
Are you a prescriptivist in descriptivist clothing? A closet prescriptivist? You may not side with those who use the force of authority to impose language standards on others, but aren’t you actually trying to influence usage?
I see nothing wrong in that, by the way. I think that people who care about English — especially those who have seriously studied its history, grammar, dialectology, etc. — have the right to influence others, by the example of their own usage and by specific recommendations. Those recommendations might be simply to ignore the “rules” of self-appointed authorities or they might be more positive. But it is a type of prescriptivism — just not the brain-dead, dictatorial type you (and I) deplore.
I think you are trying to guide others in usage, but it is not clear what principles lie behind your guidance. It is not pure descriptivism, or anything that anybody says or writes would be equally acceptable. The only principle I see on your site that one should avoid constructions that run a strong risk of destroying the communication. That’s fine, as far as it goes, but I think you might want to formulate something stronger. There are usage choices that actually improve the quality of communication, that may even improve the language itself as a tool of communication. No one can enforce these choices, but you can do your part to encourage them.
As for your anaphoristic argument: I’m not sure why you need this. You declare that (3b) is acceptable, even though (3a) is not. If this was an attempt to convince the opposition, I think it won’t work: People who are committed to the singularity of “none” will not accept (3b). Your stating that (3b) is acceptable sounds (to them) like you are assuming the conclusion you are trying to prove. Of course, you aren’t; you are basing your statement on observed usage. But then this argument adds nothing to the Google search.
What I like best is your argument that “Zero may not be plural, but it’s not singular either.” We are talking about the cardinality of the null set here. How can you count the objects when there are no objects to count? “None” is, indeed, a special case, and the language does not provide a special syntactical category for it. Instead, the language has evolved in such a way that “none” means both “not one” and “not any” (in different contexts), as you have shown empirically.
January 12, 2010 at 6:54 am
richdesign
It’s interesting that you say “…there ARE no objects to count.” For some reason we tend to refer to the null set as plural. If we were reading out an inventory of items we would say, “2 apples, 1 pear, 0 peaches,” with the plural “peaches.” Maybe this is why many people naturally say “None are.”
February 5, 2010 at 1:09 pm
Gabe
Peter: That’s a good point, the monotonic progression. (And I totally did not get that out of Ronald’s comment, so thanks for finding it.) But it raises the question of whether zero is a continuation of the natural numbers, or a separate type of entity. When I said above that zero wasn’t singular, I didn’t mean that it couldn’t be singular, but rather I meant that it didn’t fit the standard definition of “singular” — which I take to refer to “one and only one” — any more than it fit the standard definition of “plural” — which I take to refer to “more than one”. I don’t see that as a proclamation, but rather an observation of the empirical state of affairs. Since neither singular nor plural covers zero under those meanings, we need to expand one of those definitions to include zero. This is the point that Poethius made in his last paragraph.
I think this can be done in two simple and obvious ways: either make singular mean “less than two” or make plural mean “not one”. In light of the monotonic progression point, the former certainly makes sense. But I don’t see a problem with thinking of singular as a special agreement for the case where there is a unique object being picked out, and plural for everything else. Yes, it breaks monotonicity, but nothing says that language has to exhibit or ought to exhibit monotonicity. (Rich makes a good argument that the plural is more appropriate for zero in his comment above.)
And then there’s the third way, in which we don’t worry that zero isn’t singular or plural. Instead, we treat zero as underspecified or dual-specified for agreement, and allow it to take either singular or plural agreement. That’s my feeling on it, that zero isn’t inherently singular or plural, so either one can be used. “None” might even have its singularity/plurality inherited from the noun it quantifies, which is my current take on the matter.
Now, I don’t understand your claim that none can’t quantify a plural noun. It obviously can, as in “none of my cars are working”. If I said “none of my car is working”, I’d be saying something completely different (and borderline incoherent). I assume I have misunderstood your point there.
Also, you seem to feel that “there is no red car” sounds better than “there are no red cars” in all situations. For me, there is a pragmatic difference. The former suggests that there is some specific referent that isn’t there. I’m thinking of the Matrix’s “there is no spoon” to mean that the spoon that appears to be there is not. Another possibility is that only one object would be expected or needed, as in the book titled “Where There is No Doctor: A Village Health Care Handbook”. The idea here is that a village would be expected to have a single doctor, or that only one doctor is needed, so a singular “no doctor” is appropriate.
But when there is an expectation for multiple objects, or when there is no reason to favor a single object, the plural is better for me. For instance, if you asked me “How many cars are there in the parking lot?”, I’d respond with “There are no cars there” more readily than with “There is no car there”. Even if you asked me “Is there a car in the parking lot?”, I’d probably still prefer “There are no cars there.” So are you claiming that that sentence, “There are no cars there” is incorrect? If so, I strongly disagree.
Lastly, I looked into the “none can see each other” point. I agree that in isolation, that’s an awkward sentence at best. But here’s a nice example of its use in context, and I find it much less objectionable:
“I successfully pinged all three computers to the gateway, to 192.168.1.2, and to ‘localhost’. But none would ping 192.168.1.3 or 4 or 5. So, all can access the internet, but none can see each other on the network.” (http://www.tech-archive.net/Archive/WinXP/microsoft.public.windowsxp.network_web/2007-09/msg00356.html)
Thanks for the in-depth comment. I hope you will forgive me my slow response to it and will reply to this one when you have the chance.
—
Poethius: My dad often recited a Aristotle quote to me as a child: “A fool persuades me with his reasons, a wise man persuades me with my own.” When I cite other grammarians, and argue against the etymological fallacy, it is not because those hold water in my mind, but because they hold water in others’ minds. I have found other people on the internet argue against “none are” based on those arguments, and my saying “I do not believe in the validity of your argument” is a weaker counterpoint than “even if I believed the validity of your argument, the facts prove you wrong”.
As for my personal philosophy, you’ve hit on something by noting that I do not have a strongly formulated principle in place. This is actually intentional. I do not feel that I have enough of an understanding of language and the many factors that affect its usage to state anything more than that constructions with a reasonable expectation of disrupting communication should be avoided. To be honest, I don’t think many people have a complete enough understanding of language to say anything stronger than that. I’m always working on improving my knowledge and trying to get a little bit further, but I’m not there yet. You’ve certainly forced me to push harder at getting a more complete philosophy, but I don’t have anything new to report yet.
March 29, 2010 at 7:31 am
Joshua
One problem that I have with descriptivism is that it gives us no idea as to what extent we should be tolerant of grammatical error. Should we accept ‘less’ rather than ‘fewer’? Provided the meaning is clear, there seems little reason why we shouldn’t degenerate into a grammatical free-for-all, demanding on no standards whatsoever.
March 29, 2010 at 10:28 am
Vance
Joshua, I think the question which you have to settle for yourself is what kind of arguments about usage you will accept. Descriptivism can be summarized as the attitude that only arguments based in evidence about usage are valid. Note that this includes not only general contemporary usage, but usage of specific language communities, established authors, and to some extent historical periods.
So it’s perfectly possible to make a descriptivist argument that an article, in English, can’t directly follow its noun — no “book the”, “book a”, etc. — based only on examination of usage. It’s not a free-for-all. In other words, descriptivism does literally give us an “idea as to what extent we should be tolerant of grammatical error:” specifically, it says that this extent is limited by the evidence.
Do you want tighter restrictions? That’s understandable, and I’m sure that every writer follows narrower rules than what can be justified from usage evidence. But without such evidence, I think you should be cautious about prescribing to others.
March 29, 2010 at 11:03 am
goofy
Joshua, you seem to be assuming that the absence of prescriptivism will lead to a “grammatical free-for-all”, with “no standards whatsoever”. But this isn’t true. If all the prescriptive usage books disappeared tomorrow, nothing would happen to English that hasn’t been happening to languages for thousands of years.
April 12, 2010 at 10:40 am
Joshua
You are probably right to an extent, in that language would not change radically overnight. However, it is, to a degree, people’s insistence upon adherence to rules that prevents it from changing faster than it does. If something is correct according to its usage by the majority, then at what point does it become correct? In fact, if it is acceptable to prescribe rules according to common usage, then language could not evolve, because those who initially use grammar in contrary to the popular usage would be ‘incorrect’.
Now, I don’t believe that all grammatical rules should be adhered to. See, I just ended a sentence with a preposition. Certain rules serve little purpose (such as the split infinitive rule, which is probably a hangover from Latin, where the infinitive is one word). However, where grammatical changes erode the subtleties and precision of English, we should be cautious.
April 17, 2010 at 8:23 am
Leah
Technically, though, you can use ‘is’ all the time. For singular words it is the only choice, and you can use either singular or plural (so that means you still CAN use it) for plural words, and also with just ‘none.’
So people like me who only use it in singular are technically correct. It would be easier if people just learned to say ‘is’ every time so you don’t have to search through the sentence to see if you can use ‘are’ or not.
April 17, 2010 at 8:59 am
goofy
Joshua:
“In fact, if it is acceptable to prescribe rules according to common usage, then language could not evolve, because those who initially use grammar in contrary to the popular usage would be ‘incorrect’.”
Hold on… most English prescriptive rules are based on common usage. And yet English does change.
April 17, 2010 at 9:58 pm
Vance
I think we can elide a term in Joshua’s argument: “If it is acceptable to prescribe rules … then language could not evolve.” Pretty plainly not true, I think: practically everybody thinks it’s OK to prescribe, and language does evolve. So, obviously enough, the implication, the if-then, must fail.
(As to why it fails, I think it must have to do with the nature of the rules that can reasonably be prescribed. But that’s secondary.)
April 21, 2010 at 6:44 am
One, singular sensation « I Spy Grammar
[…] guilty about my lack of entry yesterday, I awoke early to research the word […]
April 30, 2010 at 10:53 am
David Reich
In reality, “is and “are” are both incorrect with “none.” The correct word is “be.”
As in: none of you peoples *be* correct.
That’s a joke. Sweet analysis.
David Reich
May 3, 2010 at 7:46 am
Heather
I was prompted to search for the usage of “none is” versus “none are” after hearing these lyrics in a song: “None of us is fine.” It sounded so completely wrong to me – I would always say “none of us are fine” because the noun “us” is plural, therefore it requires “are”. Having read this article, I have to concede that some people obviously consider that “none of us is fine” is actually grammatically correct.
It still sounds absolutely awful to my ears, but perhaps this is another American/English thing (I’m Australian so I subscribe to English grammar rules rather than to American grammar rules and believe me, there are more differences than you’d think). It would be interesting to conduct a poll and see if it’s only Americans who think that “is” is acceptable when using “none” with a plural.
May 3, 2010 at 8:00 am
Heather
As an addendum: Of course, Jeremy Clarkson is English, so I guess it isn’t just Americans who use the singular with “none” and a plural noun (in his case, the noun “people”). I’m going to stick with using “are” in both his sentence and the one I cited, though.
May 3, 2010 at 9:12 am
Vance
I tried Googling “none of them is” and “none of them are” on timesonline.co.uk. About the same number of estimated hits (8K vs. 9K). Clarkson turns up early in one list. Early on the other, we find their style guide, advising the singular verb.
Heather, can you document that “English grammar rules” specify the plural verb?
May 3, 2010 at 9:13 am
Vance
Ugh, botched the links again. none is, none are.
May 31, 2010 at 4:07 am
Serbian Tranlator
If you, native speakers, cannot agree on the rules can you imagine what it is like for foreigners? I can never find a straightforward answer to my queries :) but I like the slogan: “Prescriptivism Must Die!” that does help!
June 6, 2010 at 7:17 pm
Ben
I don’t think you can get by using “is” all the time without running into some ugliness. Consider it with some other verbs and you’ll see you need to use plurals (at least, that’s what my ear tells me).
“None of us goes for a walk”
“None of us works on the weekend”
“None of us likes chocolate”
“None of these examples is clearly wrong, but all of them sound horrible”
None of these examples are clearly wrong, but all of them sound horrible!
I follow my ear when writing, which I suppose is a descriptivist approach because my sense of what sounds good and bad must come from the usage I’ve read in books all my life.
June 7, 2010 at 10:55 am
Gabe
Serbian Translator: If it’s any consolation, I’d have the same problem with Serbian, and I’m currently having the same problem with Spanish. Especially the difference between dialects; luckily English dialects aren’t hugely different, but the difference between Spanish Spanish and Mexican-American Spanish are.
Ben: None of them sound bad to me. However, “None of them sounds bad to me” would, at least in this context.
June 13, 2010 at 11:45 pm
MK
Awesome!! article. Don’t mind my punctuation:D. It was like a thorn that just won’t come out. ” None of the Directors are” always sounded better to me than “none of the Directors is” although the second was commonly used.
Keep enlightning us.
Ciao
July 3, 2010 at 11:04 pm
Liliputia Geeant
I found this article question invigorating as it does highlight a debate that my boyfriend and I have been having for quite some time. This came about after listening to a old favourite song from Sesame Street in which the character- in helping to explain to children the difference between all, some and none- says in one line of the song ‘None of us are here.’
This can be heard @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7cWBrGAIcc but not great quality just in case you wanted to see what I was talking about.
That has always sounded hilarious to me since if no one was there how could he be saying anything anyhow. But that line “None of us are here” always sounded wrong to be because I was always taught that the qualifying adjective or adjectival noun and its various properties were what was used to determine the properties of the verb.
Of course ‘None of us is’ sounded wrong to him hence the ongoing debate.
I am not sure if this or any of the comments really does give a satisfactory answer to finish the debate once and for all but I guess that is the beauty of language and particularly the English language- there is always room for more debate!
In any case to those who seem a bit uptight- start enjoying the English language. It’ll probably still be around after you have died from being too uptight. :)
July 19, 2010 at 6:10 am
Is “none” plural or singular? Yes. - Writing for Business
[…] maintain that you can pretty much do as you please with this one. Here’s an excerpt from Gabe Doyle’s post on Motivated Grammar about the none issue as a (mostly) non-issue: In fact, pretty much everyone agrees on three basic […]
August 30, 2010 at 1:50 pm
Jcott
I’m afraid I must disagree. It is certain that it is socially acceptable for none to be used with a plural verb agreement, but it is simply not grammatically correct. None means “no one.” That is all there is to it. An above user used the sentence “Please have one last close look at it for any changes, but if there is none then this one is ready to go” to argue in favor of the plural usage, but there is absolutely nothing wrong with this sentence, and no other way for none to be conjugated. “Changes” is certainly plural, but that is not what is being agreed with the verb. “None” is. If one wanted to make a plural conjugation, then the sentence must be changed to “there are no changes.” What is currently being said is that “there is not one change.” If you don’t like the feeling of “none is,” either get used to it or change your wording completely, lest you be grammatically incorrect.
August 31, 2010 at 7:41 am
Daniel
Jcott: Did you actually READ the post before you responded? Because the weak argument you just trotted out is addressed in the post..and by “addressed” I mean “utterly demolished”. Try going back and reading the article again, starting just below the table.
October 8, 2010 at 11:30 am
Sir
No I still think it is singular. The illustration with the mice does not work. A mouse cannot “see each other” so both sentences are invalid.
October 8, 2010 at 11:33 am
Sir
Also for RichDesign — it should be “there IS none”, that is, “there is no red car”.
November 21, 2010 at 1:01 pm
dannyboy
Daniel,
The author does not “demolish” the argument from semantic equivalence. In fact, he asserts more than he argues. For the argument itself, he refers to a previous article about a semantic relationship that differs from the word/phrase in question, since nobody is arguing that different is a contraction of differs. That article, however, is not a very strong argument in itself. It sets up a straw man (that the problem with “different than” has something to do with Latin) and proceeds to knock it down. A more sensible discussion of the pros and cons of “different than” in a living language like English may be found here:
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2295/is-different-than-bad-grammar
I still am not persuaded that Jcott’s position is not tenable if one is striving for the most consistent and rational grammatical standards. Still, I have to admit that such striving can seem Quixotic outside of an academic context.
peace
April 9, 2011 at 6:32 pm
Rona Y
I know this is an old post, but I just have to comment. . .
If you’re going to be pedantic about is/are (or about grammar, in general), perhaps you could discuss this error in your post:
“. . . but I wanted badly to read the sentence with are replacing is.”
You can’t want something badly, unless perhaps there is something very strange in the manner in which you are wanting it. Although this usage is very common, it is not prescriptively correct.
April 10, 2011 at 4:48 pm
Gabe
Rona: I don’t understand your complaint. I’m railing against pedantry, not for it. Contrary to the pedant’s view, I argue that both none is and none are are grammatical. As for the error you found, well, it’s not an error. It’s a two-hundred-year-old usage of badly, which the Oxford English Dictionary first notes in 1813. I’ll gladly consent to calling it “informal”, but it’s certainly no error.
May 11, 2011 at 8:33 am
cloud9ine
““None of us goes for a walk”
“None of us works on the weekend”
“None of us likes chocolate”
“None of these examples is clearly wrong, but all of them sound horrible”
None of the examples above sounds horrible.
Well except my sentence right above this line.
May 11, 2011 at 8:36 am
cloud9ine
Also the mice example is wrong. It should be
None of the mice can see another.
No each other. Each other is when two elements are present in the set.
There are three people. They do not love each other. They love one another.
There are two people. They love each other.
There is one person. He just loves another.
May 11, 2011 at 8:37 am
cloud9ine
None indicates a failure to find one. The opposite would be one. So, as a shortcut to get the right number, substitute ‘one’ and check if your sentence sounds right.
July 11, 2011 at 5:46 am
Ebrahim
usage of singular or plural none has to do with whether it refers to a countable noun or a uncountable noun. for example food is an uncountable noun therefore we say “None of the food” but project is a countable noun so we say “Node of the projects”
July 25, 2011 at 11:54 am
Oliver Neukum
I’d say there’s a difference in meaning.
None of them is strong enough for that = There is no individual among them strong enough for that
None of them are strong enough for that = There is no subgroup among them which could provide enough combined strength for that.
February 11, 2012 at 8:21 pm
Lindsey
I would NEVER use none as a singular when quantifying a plural noun. None of the projects is? Really? People say that? I’m in shock right now, especially considering how close the usage numbers are.
February 11, 2012 at 8:24 pm
Lindsey
I put none in a category with words like any, all, some…
Some of us are happy.
All of us are happy.
Are any of us happy?
And finally,
None of us are happy.
No matter how many times I repeat it to myself, using is just doesn’t sound right.
February 11, 2012 at 8:25 pm
Lindsey
I take that back. Any can definitely be singular; I don’t know what I was thinking. Still though, it doesn’t sound right with none..
February 11, 2012 at 8:26 pm
Lindsey
Although… if I use any+plural noun, I think I always make any plural. If any of the dogs are hungry…
February 17, 2012 at 9:24 am
Oscar
Fabulous. At my office we’re going to start asking interviewees to complete a short test to evaluate reading comp, grammar and that sort of thing. So, today we all tried out the test ourselves for “fun”.
One of the questions read: “None of the footballers ______ able to score a goal yesterday” or something like that. The multiple choice answers were: A.Was, B.Were, C.Is, D.don’t remember. The point is, I answered ‘B.Were’ and it was marked as wrong, losing me the 40/40 score I was after. This article made my day. I am indeed of the mind that as ‘footballers’ is a plural noun, ‘none’ can be plural too.
My grammar, no doubt, has flaws (no need to point them out) but I was so sure about this answer, that I just to do my research. I have of course forwarded the bulk of this article to our examiner. RESULT!
THANK YOU
February 22, 2012 at 7:05 am
Timothy Smith
“None is” vs. “none are” – I tend to say “none are,” but I remember hearing that “none” is supposed to be a contraction of “not one,” so that it should be “none is.” Then I found this article. The author weighs the merits of each, both grammatically and in terms of actual usage (by checking the millions of Google searches using these terms). The author’s conclusion is interesting, as are the many readers’ comments.
May 27, 2012 at 9:12 pm
Frank
Regardless of what google turns up, the correct version should be: NONE OF THE PEOPLE IS ….
May 27, 2012 at 9:21 pm
Daniel
Frank: Do you have any evidence to support your claim, or is this just another example of someone reading (or not reading) the article with all of its evidence and thinking that all he needs to do to make a convincing counterargument is say “This is the correct answer” with absolutely no support whatsoever?
May 29, 2012 at 1:25 pm
Sean
I just typed in “none” at dictionary.com. It says “none” is a contraction for not any which to me is good enough and much simpler than all this mumbo jumbo lol. check it out
June 8, 2012 at 9:59 pm
Dennis
Strangely, I found this article when I was using mr google to count the number of “none is” vs. “none are”. I.e. using google for statistical grammar or spelling checking.
(My day job is a computer language lawyer, so I deal with precise rules.)
I’ve found another class of the usage of “none”.
Ideally you should say: If the word “none” is specified …
But you may be tempted to just say: If none is specified …
June 25, 2012 at 11:02 am
hdman
This gives me a headache. First, languages and their usage are evolving. Second, the true purpose of grammar must be to make clear one’s communication or message. Otherwise, it’s all about “straining at the gnat to swallow the camel.” The important issues are these. What do you mean to say? What is the general understanding in the current use of the language about what you mean to say?
It’s just silly to strain the issue more than necessary. Remember KISS: Keep it simple stupid. Keep to the substance of the matter. I feel that fixating on the grammar–being excessively fixated and rigid grammar police gets in the way of getting to the content. Be clear, period.
I liked the bit above about zero being neither singular or plural. Perhaps we should say “zero” instead of none; but then we’re still in the same boat. For KISS purposes, it makes sense that as a general rule people opt for the singular usage.
At some point this is like trying to fully comprehend infinity. If one thinks one can, that’s great. The truth, however, is that none is able to fully comprehend infinity in terms of absolute conceptional thought.
It seems sensible then to keep things as simple as possible with these rules. I say if one wants to opt for the plural, they should just write out, “Not any are.” Otherwise, stick with the old stanby of not one is, or none is. Focus on clarity and concept.
June 26, 2012 at 5:32 pm
richdesign
I subscribed to this comment thread over 2 years ago, and it has been fascinating to watch the responses come in every now and then, prompting me occasionally to think about it more and grammar rules generally.
I think that like most other people out there, I instinctively treat “none” as a stand-in word for what I have just been referring to, kind of like a pronoun.
e.g. Sorry, there ISN’T any cheese. There IS none left. We don’t have any of THAT.
or: Sorry, there AREN’T any muffins. There ARE none left. We don’t have any of THOSE.
In each case, “none” is shorthand for the thing we’re referring to – cheese or muffins – so instinctively most people match the singular or plural verb to whether the item is singular or plural.
That may not fulfil what some old grammar text book says, but it makes sense and sounds right to most people and certainly doesn’t lead to any confusion or misunderstanding. (Which is why I agreed completely with the start of your comment Hdman, but was surprised by your conclusion.)
My approach to these kinds of grammatical debates – e.g. this one or “less” vs “fewer” or “if I were/was you” – is that if nearly all reasonably educated and well-spoken people are using one over the other, then it now counts as ‘correct’, or at least correct enough for me to use. The same applies if someone like Gabe, who knows grammar well, can put together such a well reasoned argument that many or most people agree with, then it also must be accepted enough and common enough to be good enough for me to use. If I’m writing something formal, then I’ll probably use the more old-school version, just to keep any stalwarts happy, but other than that I’m happy to move with the times.
There are some grammatical errors that are common but still wrong, e.g. “He sung a song” or a sign saying, “Video’s”, but that’s because they still sound wrong to most reasonably educated people. Once it gets to the point where nearly everyone is getting it ‘wrong’ it will eventually become accepted. Does anyone still think that “harrass” rhymes with “Paris” like in a 50 year old poem I read?
This kind of debate is all part of a healthy, living language of course, but at the end of the day, the people who are shaping it – which is everyone who speaks it – are going ahead and speaking it their way anyway, regardless of what a tiny handful of grammar enthusiasts think.
July 9, 2012 at 6:57 am
Pchełki językowe. | xpil.eu
[…] https://motivatedgrammar.wordpress.com/2009/01/08/none-is-none-are-grammar-according-to-clarkson/ […]
July 16, 2012 at 2:56 pm
Ric
Some great arguments going on about this. Here are my thoughts on the above:
1. Logically (mathematically speaking), “not one” and “none” are not equal. “Not one of the cars is/are red” suggests 0 or 2+ cars. “None of the cars is/are red” states precisely 0 cars. “Not any” as suggested by an early poster is more appropriate for this argument.
2. Language changes over time, as a response to how it is used. If enough people use it in a particular fashion, then over time, that use because prevalent, and then generally accepted. This is how new words are introduced, and grammar rules are no exception to this. Personally I’m pleased about this, otherwise languages would become stale and increasingly irrelevant to modern societies.
3. There are dialects in England where the verb “to be” isn’t even conjugated, e.g. Gloucestershire: “Him be a man”. I certainly wouldn’t want to be the one to tell my Gran that the language she’s been speaking all her life is “not correct”, and if you’ve any sense, neither would you. As English is now spoken not only in different regions in England, but also in different regions all around the world, clearly there are going to be differences – who’s to say definitively what is correct and what is not.
4. As native speakers of THE lingua franca, it is our duty to stop being so anal about unimportant rules that hark back to our own personal education / upbringing, and concentrate more on the underlying meaning that people are conveying. If communication is not impaired, then language has served its purpose. England no longer has sole ownership over the English language, and we need to accept and embrace this.
July 16, 2012 at 2:59 pm
Ric
*becomes prevalent*, not *because prevalent* – sorry
August 7, 2012 at 8:28 am
matt
I was always taught “none is”, but to me, “none are” sounds more normal. The less-than-one definition of singular doesn’t quite ring true for me. “There were no cats” sounds fine to me; “there was no cat” is clearly fine, but sounds a little fussy to me. Here’s a curiosity: “zero monkeys” or “zero monkey”. Now I know they’re both a bit odd, but the first one sounds grammatical to me. “0.5 cats” also sounds better than “0.5 cat”. Ok, that’s a bad example, how about this: “3 degrees hotter”, “1 degree hotter”, “0.5 degrees”, “zero degrees”. It’s the same for me with other units. Does any reader think it’s better to say “zero degree”
August 7, 2012 at 8:49 am
matt
It also seems that the the plural/singular thing depends, in some circumstances, on how many of the things we expect. I’ve got no legs, not no leg. My dog, however, has no nose, not no noses.
August 26, 2012 at 4:50 pm
The video tutorial on subject-verb agreement « Pros Write
[…] for mixing metaphors?) agreement questions related to special forms like “none,” read this post from Motivated […]
October 14, 2012 at 2:43 pm
abdelouahed
I guess that none is a contraction of no one which is singular.
November 6, 2012 at 2:13 am
Keith Brian Johnson
The source of the confusion seems clear to me. We hear the plural noun (in “none of the cars” or in “none of them”) and without even thinking link that plural noun to the plural verb form we learned to associate with plural nouns. So, “None of the cars are red” can easily sound right to the ear, even though the logic of the sentence demands the singular verb (“None of the cars is red”). Note that I said the *logic* of the sentence demands the singular verb, not that “none” etymologically derives from “not one.” One *means* “Not one of the cars is red,” so the singular verb is required. (“None of the mice could see each other” is just wrong. “None of the mice could see any of the others” is required.)
However, long usage by a significant portion of the populace can make a usage become acceptable, and that, I think, either is happening or has happened with “none” and plural forms of verbs. “It’s me” should be “It’s I,” but hardly anybody answers “Who is it” by saying “It’s I” (or even “It is I”). Part of learning correct language usage is a matter of learning what sounds right to the great majority of native speakers, and “none are” often simply sounds right to a sufficiently high proportion of native speakers as to justify, practically if not theoretically, the use of the plural form of the verb.
November 7, 2012 at 6:06 pm
donna
end you misery by simplicity : Arabic language is far more grammatically wide n deep especially in each use of every word and its stem and root n stuff so in arabic none always takes is as explanation for it that nothing n none is zerooo that doesn’t count so how come it’s plural that’s why it’s singular
November 7, 2012 at 6:13 pm
Donna
being more specified : Arabic language is far more grammatically wide n deep especially in each use of every word, its stem, root n stuff so in arabic none always takes is.
as an explanation for it , nothing n none are zerooo that doesn’t count so how come each of ’em takes plural !
therefor none takes is by proof
November 13, 2012 at 7:57 am
A Gentleman
“None of the blind mice can see each other.” What kind of sentence is that? Do you mean, “The blind mice are unable to see each other.’? btw If you accept the set of submissions to Google or any other website as a basis for an argument in grammar, you must be very easily pleased!
November 24, 2012 at 5:06 am
Mason
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December 9, 2012 at 1:10 am
Words Inside
Compare:
1. None of those people is my father.
2. None of those people are my parents.
June 2, 2013 at 4:47 am
kim
A question for you all then…
None of these people are dead.
None of these people is dead.
As a Canadian, we were taught that NONE is always singular (at least that’s what we were taught way back in the 70’s). Why? Because ‘of these people’ is actually acting as an adjective. Sine when does the adjective dictate the verb? Remove it and you get:
None are dead.
None is dead.
To me, none means ”not one”. If you want to use ARE, I think you’d have to say the reverse, ”All are alive”.
What do you all think?
June 2, 2013 at 6:24 pm
Daniel
Kim: I would say the following things in response:
1. To my ear (YMMV), “none are dead” sounds better than “none is dead”.
2. No one is claiming that an adjective dictates the verb, so that argument is a bit of a straw man.
3. When you say “to me, none means ‘not one'”, are you saying you think the two have the same grammar? If you are not saying that, then it really does not factor into the equation. If you are saying that, then you need to explain why “Not one of the blind mice can see each other” is grammatically correct.
June 3, 2013 at 12:02 am
Keith Brian Johnson
I’d say that “None of the blind mice can see each other” and “Not one of the blind mice can see each other” are both wrong. “None of the blind mice can see the others” (or “None of the blind mice can see any of the others”) and “Not one of the blind mice can see the others” (or “Not one of the blind mice can see any of the others” ) are correct.
The trouble with interpreting “none” as “not one” is that it can also be interpreted as “not any.” One would say “Not one is dead” but “Not any are dead.” Anyway, I think that usage has established that “none” may be treated grammatically, though perhaps not logically, as either singular or plural when not dealing with mass nouns (“None of the yogurt are left” would, of course, be wrong).
June 6, 2013 at 12:17 pm
Jerry Gardner
How about, “Not one is dead”, therefore two or more are dead?
June 6, 2013 at 12:27 pm
kim
Such a hot topic! I love it. I am seriously sold on the singular use. If it is not incorrect, I shall stick to it! The plural just sounds like poor grammar to my ears. But I am no expert!
Not one is dead. – could very well mean that two or more are dead but it could also mean that not one single person is dead.
June 6, 2013 at 1:20 pm
Jerry Gardner
No question about the potential ambiguity although I was playing devils advocate by pushing the envelope.
June 19, 2013 at 1:22 am
LV
The argument that none means zero and that zero is not singular is spurious. None means not one, therefore the subject of the verb is ONE, not zero. Who will deny that ONE is singular?
June 19, 2013 at 4:59 am
Rich
One is of course singular, by definition. So does that then make “not one” not singular?!
June 19, 2013 at 6:03 am
kim
So Rich, you would argue that since Not One is plural, Not John or Not Susan would also be plural? I don’t follow your arguement. One is one. One is NOT two or three or more.
July 17, 2013 at 11:31 pm
Tristan Cooper
Can anyone give an example where “none” does not mean “not one” ?
July 18, 2013 at 7:04 pm
Daniel
Tristan Cooper: I don’t think anyone is arguing that “none” means something other than “not one”. The argument is that just because the two have the same meaning doesn’t mean they have to have the same grammar. After all (I’m borrowing an example from another of Gabe’s posts here), “dissimilar” indisputably means “not the same”, but while “My hair color is not the same as my brother’s” is correct grammar, “*My hair color is dissimilar as my brother’s” is not.
That being said, there are plenty of examples where “none” does not mean “not one”. First of all, this is the case with any mass noun (e.g., “none of the cheese” vs. “*not one of the cheese”. But if you want some count nouns as examples, I would suggest things which traditional come in pairs, such as “pants” or “scissors”. “Not one of the scissors” doesn’t sound quite right, because no on ever speaks of a single scissor.
July 18, 2013 at 11:23 pm
Tristan Cooper
Daniel – I suggest that, as we are talking about “none”, comments about “dissimilar” are a red herring.
With a mass noun, such as your example, are you suggesting it should be “None of the cheese are . . . .”? eg “I have 20 kgs of cheddar, none of the cheese are bad”? Can you give an example of how you would use “None of the cheese are. . ”
Similarly, if I am talking about one pair of pants or one pair of scissors, how can I use none at all? eg “I am wearing blue pants, none of them are torn”?
“I have a pair of scissors, none of them are sharp”? Surely not.
We simply would not use “none” or “not one” when referring to a single incidence of a pair of pants or scissors.
“I am wearing blue pants, they are not torn.”
“I have a pair of scissors, they are not sharp.”
But –
“I have 5 pairs of pants, none of them is green.” (Not one pair is green)
“I have 5 pairs of scissors, none of them is blunt” (Not one pair is blunt).
So, my question remains – can anyone give an example (a complete sentence please) where none does not mean not one?
July 19, 2013 at 7:29 am
Daniel
Tristan: Whether comments about “dissimilar” are relevant depends on just what your argument is. If your argument is that none must take a singular because “none” means “not one” and “not one” must take a singular, then it is perfectly relevant because it shows that “A means the same as B, so A must have the same grammar as B” is not a valid argument. The “dissimilar as” serves as a counterexample to that line of thinking.
If your argument is something other than this, then you’re going to need to explain just what your argument is.
As for the mass nouns and the pants/scissors, I was simply answering the question you asked. You asked for examples where “none” does not mean “not one” and I provided them. Again, you need to explain just what your argument is. As best as I can tell, your question may be the red herring.
July 19, 2013 at 7:41 am
kim
Hot topic! I wish I was a linguist, versed in the beautiful language that is English! I wish I knew the historical construction of the language… but alas, I do not. However, it seems to me as though NONE is a contraction of NOT ONE. If that is the case, should it not follow the grammar proper to NOT ONE? I am thinking out loud here…
I’m going = I am going – not I is going, or I are going. We’re hungry = We are hungry – not we is hungry. Not One is going = None is going – not None are going.
Would this not be a better arguement than the use of dissimilar (since we should be comparing nouns to nouns… no?)
July 19, 2013 at 2:20 pm
Daniel
Kim: “None” is not a contraction of “not one”. It comes from the Anglo-Saxon word “nān”.
Now, admittedly, that is a bit of a simplification, since it turns out that “nān” comes from Anglo-Saxon “ne ān”, which is Anglo-Saxon for “not one”. However, the development of the word “nān” happened over a thousand years ago, and the English language has changed dramatically since then, particularly with regards to grammatic number (Anglo-Saxon had singular, dual, and plural pronouns whereas Modern English only has singluar and plural). Also, as goofy points out in the first comment, “nān” was used with plural number as far back as the year 1070. In short, the formation of “nān” from “ne ān” happened so long ago, and so many other changes (including the use of “nān” with plural verbs) have happened since that formation, that grammatical use of “one” is basically irrelevant to grammatical use of “none”.
July 19, 2013 at 3:16 pm
Rich
Reflecting on this question, initially the logic around “not one” seems sound, but considering it more widely, to me, “none” actually means “not any”: “Are there any apples? Sorry, there aren’t any. There are none.” You could also say, “Is there a car available? Sorry, there isn’t one. There is none.” but I think in that case, I would be more likely to say, “there isn’t one” than “there is none”.
If fact, I’d even go as far as to suggest that “none” is probably most commonly used in the plural by most people for quantifiable nouns. I’m pretty sure that most would say, “There are none left” or “none of them are broken” for countable objects. The singular is only common because it is used for mass nouns like “food” or “cheese”: “There is none left” or “none of the food is hot”.
The reason for this is that “none” means “not any”, and any is not restricted to the singular.
Looking up the Oxford Dictionary (my definitive source for World/ British English) confirms this, with the definition very simply stated as, “not any” (http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/none?q=none). It also confirms Daniel’s point about the original source of the word actually being “not one” but also adds: “It is sometimes held that none can only take a singular verb, never a plural verb: none of them is coming tonight rather than none of them are coming tonight. There is little justification, historical or grammatical, for this view. None is descended from Old English nān meaning ‘not one’ and has been used for around a thousand years with both a singular and a plural verb, depending on the context and the emphasis needed.”
As to your logical question, Tristan: as “one” is a more restrictive subset of “any”, any time “not any” applies, then so must the tighter “not one”. So your argument for “not one” works, because the meaning is “not any” and “not one” is a subset of that. The corresponding question then is: is there an example where “not any” does not apply?
But even if it were technically “not one”, there is no arguing that the word “unique” means “one of a kind”, and therefore is binary – it either is, or isn’t, unique, there are no shades of grey. But in common usage, unique has also come to mean “unusual” or “uncommon” and in that context “quite unique” makes sense. The Oxford Dictionary again, sensibly says that if this secondary meaning is assumed, then “quite unique” is grammatically correct. Because we are not computers, words often taken on meanings and usages beyond their literal definition.
These arguments about language are pointless at the end of the day anyway. Languages are at best conventions, and who has the right to say that a word or grammatical construct in common usage is somehow wrong? To me the word “sick” has always meant “unwell”, but if I go down to the skate park it means something like “cool” (I think!). Is that meaning not valid just because I don’t use it? How long has “cool” had its non-temperature related meaning anyway?
“Harass” used to rhyme with “Paris”. Who still says “whom”? “If I was you…” or “If I were you…”?
If relatively intelligent people are saying something in their everyday language, then it has already become part of the language, and trying to deny that is like trying to hold back the tide. (As long as there is some logic to it: I don’t see apostrophes as suddenly becoming part of the accepted pluralisation of words (as in “Video’s”) because it’s just an error without any kind of logical basis.)
So it’s case closed for me. I, and plenty others like me, quite happily say “none are” with no ambiguity of meaning, and it seems this has been the case for a thousand years or so. If others want to continue to say “none is” at all times, you are most welcome to interpret your language however you see fit. It won’t hinder my understanding of what you’re saying at all.
July 20, 2013 at 3:31 am
kim
Thank you Rich… I like your explanations – a lot! But, my little brain still feels it sounds wrong. So, right or not, it will always be None Is to me!
Cheers!
September 19, 2013 at 11:12 am
Matt
How would the word “zero” fit in here? Or could we just get rid of “none” and quantify it with a numeric?
September 29, 2013 at 7:39 pm
Marie
I have a question:
1. None of the students has a high score in the exam and are not interested to study.
2. None of the students has a high score in the exam and is interested to study.
Are these sentences in the same meaning that “students are not got the high score and they are not interested to study?
September 30, 2013 at 12:47 am
Keith Brian Johnson
Marie: First, I think you mean to contrast these: (1) None of the students have high scores and are interested to study; (2) None of the students has a high score and is interested to study. (Your (1) has an extra “not,” and if (1) is treated as plural in its first half, then it must also be treated as plural in its second half.) Second, it’s unclear to me whether you intend (1*) None of the students have high scores and none are interested to study [(2*) None of the students has a high score and none is interested to study], or instead (1**) None of the students either have high scores or are interested to study [(2**) None of the students either has a high score or is interested to study], or instead (1***) None of the students both have high scores and are interested to study [(2***) None of the students both has a high score and is interested to study]. At any rate, my preference is for the use of the singular form, but I imagine someone could be found who preferred the use of the plural form.
Matt: I think “zero” is treated as plural: “Zero of the tigers have spots.”
March 16, 2014 at 7:33 am
policrit
Why does the article talk about “none” as a contraction of “not one”? I believe it is a contraction of “no one” or “no-one”.
March 16, 2014 at 5:50 pm
Daniel
policrit: Look up the etymology of the word in a dictionary. “None” comes from Anglo-Saxon “nān”, which in turn comes from Anglo-Saxon “ne ān”, which is Anglo-Saxon for “not one”.
July 13, 2014 at 12:05 pm
Layla
I still disagree that none can be plural. I think that its incorrect usage in the plural form has been legitimised because people have misused it without being corrected for so long that it has become accepted and seen as a natural thing. Your 3b: “None of the blind mice can see each other” is wrong because each other should never be used with a singular subject. It should have read “none of the blind mice can see the other” (“the other” implying “the other one” which still gives the “reciprocal” sense; the word “the” keeps the sentence true to the singular context of “none” (no one). This is how I’ve always learned it.
July 13, 2014 at 12:30 pm
Layla
I also disagree with KBG regarding the treatment of “zero”. I would treat “zero” in the same way that I would treat “not one/ none” since this is what “zero” in this context inplies. I would never say, “Zero of the tigers have spots” because I would treat “the tigers” as prepositional. I would say, “zero of the tigers has spots” – “zero” being the subject, “has” being the verb and “the tigers” being the prepositional phrase. The sentence could also be interpreted this way… “Not one of the tigers (none, zero) has spots”. I could be wrong, nut this is how I have always learned it. What part does subject and verb agreement play in the whole scheme of things if we say “zero are”?
July 13, 2014 at 3:13 pm
Daniel
Layla: As noted in the article, there is attested use of “none” with a plural verb as far back as the year 888. If you want to say that this is a case of an “incorrect usage” that “has been legitimised because people have misused it without being corrected for so long”, then you need to understand that this “incorrect” usage has been going on for over a millennium. Indeed, if the standard for English language is the way it was spoken in the time of Alfred the Great, then you should also be saying that using plural pronouns to refer to two people is incorrect, because in the time of Alfred the Great there was a dual number in addition to singular and plural.
July 14, 2014 at 12:34 am
TC
Layla : I agree with you. Although I would say : “none of the blind mice can see the others” as there would be more than a total of two mice, assuming one is referring to Three Blind Mice. If there were only two, it would surely be “Neither mouse can see the other”.
October 7, 2015 at 12:39 pm
Sam
(3a) *Not one of the blind mice can see each other.
(3b) None of the blind mice can see each other.
An interesting way to look at it, unless of course both sentences are incorrect, as many would argue.
October 8, 2015 at 12:55 am
Keith Brian Johnson
“None of the blind mice can see the others.”
“None of the blind mice can see any of the others.”
But surely not
“None of the blind mice can see each other.”
If someone really wants to use “each other” in his sentence, he might say,
“The blind mice cannot see each other.”
July 3, 2016 at 4:22 am
Critic Ezra
Help Me With This Question ,all The Pupils Are Late Today. Begin None, Should I Use The Antonym Of Late?
August 1, 2016 at 1:24 pm
Judith
As none is a contracted form of not one, how can it ever be plural?
August 27, 2016 at 1:10 am
David
In this thread somebody gave these two examples( I have slightly modified both sentences):
1. None of those men/them, is my father.
2. None of those people/them are my parents
I am a Spanish student learning English so I don’t know if you would all agree that both of these sentences are correct; what do you think?
If both sentences are indeed correct, I think iit is impossible to argue that none always means ‘not one’ (see 2) or that one of the agreements(either singular or plural) is incorrect.
I don’t know, though, if you may think that these sentences are wrong for some reason. In any case,I am confident that you can come up with valid similar examples… I know this thread is very old, but what do you think?
August 31, 2016 at 3:57 am
Keith Brian Johnson
Technically, I would say that “None of those men is my father” is correct; that “None of them is my father” is correct; that “None of those people is my parent” is correct; and that “None of them is my parent” is correct.
If you wanted to pick out *pairs* of people and say that none of those *pairs* was your parents, then “None of those pairs is my parents” would make sense. This is because you would be saying, “Not one of those pairs is the pair constituting my parents.”
August 29, 2016 at 7:16 am
Daniel
David: I’m not certain whether I’d be more likely to say “none of them is my father” or “none of them are my father”, but I’d recognize either as grammatically correct. And certain, “none of them are my parents” is correct. So I agree with your point about the second sentence disproving the claim that “none” always means “not one”.
March 23, 2017 at 3:26 am
Vijayanand
Sir kindly give me correct answer of following questions
All the shops were closed Begin this sentence with None of the
January 16, 2018 at 5:31 am
Karamjit Singh Puaar
very intelligently expressed………..wonderful..thank you Sir…..Respect …..Hope you can find sometime to teach me some stuffs like that ..
January 16, 2018 at 5:43 am
Karamjit Singh Puaar
To all Te intellgents :—- please assist to answer :—-Question :——————None of the ideas were ? was ? accepted …………….
Only authenticated and grammatically correct answer needed..
August 18, 2019 at 4:22 am
Dana S. Leslie
This issue becomes much clearer when one realizes that “none” is not actually the subject of “is/are,” in many of these examples. … “The girls are pretty.” ‘None of the girls are pretty.” In the second sentence, “none of” quantifies “girls,” but it does *not* become the subject of “are;” that remains “girls.” In this sort of case, think of “none of” as though it were a one-word adjective. … Thus: “None of the girls are;” but “None of the sugar is.” … The same logic applies to “all of,” “some of,” and similar “… of” quantifiers. … “One of” / “not one of” is the ‘hard case,’ here, as is also “None of them is/are,” where “them” is the subject of “is/are.” … But more on those issues, another time (If this comment gets posted).
October 18, 2021 at 11:43 pm
Using plural or singular verb after "neither" and "none" - English Vision
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