Which is grammatically correct?

First of all, the verb phrase "was/were hurt" refers to none of the officers.

Shooting is a subject of the first clause, so don't worry about it.

None of the officers should be followed by a singular verb in a formal style in British English, i.e. ...but none of the officers was hurt.

However, plural verb form after such words as [none, nei

Well, have a look at google results:

"none of * is" site:.uk 61,700

"none of * are" site:.uk 62,100

"none of * was" site:.uk 19,500

"none of * were" site:.uk 26,400

The singular and plural forms are (more or less) equally common among the speakers of English in Britain. I'm afraid I'm not able to tell what portion of these samples is formal or informal

Hi, Cairn,

I hate to be a doubting Thomas, but since expressions like "None of the meat was spoiled" would be singular (whether the agreement is with "none" or with "meat"), I don't see what the tallies prove. Wouldn't you need to isolate only cases where "none of" was followed by a plural noun?

Jim

Re: None

"None" is an indefinite pronoun which may either be plural or singular.

<< http://grammar.uoregon.edu/pronouns/indefinite.html >>

Here are t

Hello CJ,

oh you're so right about it. I forgot about the uncountable ones. I'm sorry if I misled somebody. My tallies don't prove anything.

Deebash,

http://www.gpc.edu/~lawowl/handouts/noun-pronoun-agreement.pdf and

I just can't believe that it doesn't matter which form you use.

Cairn,

I quote:

Usage Note: It is widely asserted that none is equivalent to no one, and hence requires a singular verb and singular pronoun: None of the prisoners was given his soup. It is true that none is etymologically derived from the O

I agree with cairn,

a) from A University Grammar of English,Randolph Quirk and Sidney Greenbaum, ELBS with Longman,

ISBN 0 582 05886 4, page 179.

" Indefinite expression of amount

7.24

Another area of ambivalence is that of indefinite and negative expressions of amount. For example in

I've ordered the shrubs, but none (o

...Has is therefore more conventionally 'correct', but have is more idiomatic in speech.

Wasn't the original question, "Which is grammatically correct?" ? Or was it "Which is more conventionally 'correct', blah, blah.......?"

No comment

It is often necessary not to interpret our members' questions too literally!
It is extremely frequent to be asked if a sentence is grammatically correct when the intent is to find out if the sentence is stylistically proper for passing a teacher's test of formal written English!

It is often necessary not to interpret our members' questions too literally!

I see. So if somebody were to ask for my name, it may often be necessary to interpret that as asking for my age!