"Lazarus Cooke" wrote ...

Daniel-San

Be nice to the guy in ROFB who just said "baseball ethics is [sic] a
joke".
:-)

'Ethics', like 'mathematics' etc., can be either singular or plural.
And Fowler, in 'Modern English useage', would probably favour a
singular here.


A grammarian I ain't -- I was just pointing it out to Ken. From what I've
noticed (which, after 102 Dead shows isn't an awful lot), the use of the
singular here is a British 'thing'. For example:

In American, we would (probably) say "U2 is one of my favorite bands".

In English, they would probably say "U2 are one of my favorite bands."

Just using U2 as an example.


'The presence of a singular noun complement often makes the verb
singular: "Mathematics, or even Athletics, is his strong point." '

Lazarus

--


Dan