cvs commit: www/en about.sgml

[John E Hein]

Ceri Davies wrote at 22:20 +0000 on Nov  7, 2006:
 > On Tue, Nov 07, 2006 at 05:00:26PM -0500, John Baldwin wrote:
 > > These directions are all you need.
 > > 
 > > These directions is all you need.
 > 
 > Those two sentences invert the subject and object.

The basic structure of the sentence being discussed is this:

<Subject> is/are <predicate nominative>.

The rule is that the verb should agree with the subject.

If the subject is plural, use 'are'.
If the subject is singular, use 'is'.

In order to determine which sense of the verb to use in the original
sentence, you need only determine if the subject is singular or
plural.  Simple, right?  Maybe not.

"All you need is/are these directions."

The problem is that in this sentence, it's not entirely
clear whether the subjective clause (All you need) is
plural or singular.

It could be either.  "All you need" may be one thing (a cookie) or a
few things (the following ingredients: flour, brown sugar, butter and
chocolate chips).  Other pronouns with the same property as "all"
include "any" and "some".

In order to see whether it is plural or singular, you need to take a
hint from the predicate nominative to which the subject is being
linked.

When John inverted the sentence, it seemed to make it clear that the
subject (formerly the predicate nominative) is plural.  And since we
are equating a subject and a predicate nominative, one rule of thumb
says that it should read the same forward and backwards.

If it was "this list of instructions", it would be singular (a
single list).

So my conclusion was that "these directions" are plural, and thus
"are" is better.  But one could claim that "these directions" is
singular (as in "the list of these directions" where "the list of" is
implicit), in which case it could be argued that "is" is a better
choice.  If the sentence were, "All you need is this list of
directions", it would seem to clearly point to using "is".  But that's
really a different sentence.

=================

BUT... that said, another good rule is that if something is awkward,
maybe it should be rewritten.

Why not s/All you need are these directions/Read this to learn how/
or something similar?

Note that the linked "directions" say:

"It is suggested that you use this chapter as a general guide rather
than a literal installation manual."

They (the directions) aren't necessarily all I need anyway.  I need
a computer, maybe a CD or a network connection. ;)

Back to my regularly scheduled lurking.