On Morning Edition earlier today: “Last night’s results means that he’s not unstoppable.” If you have Adobe Flash Player, you can listen here. The mistake comes at the 4:22 mark.
Results is a plural noun, not a collective noun like faculty or orchestra. And results is not a plural that applies a unit of measure to a whole. An example from Garner’s Modern American Usage : “Two pounds of shrimp is all I need.”
More to the point: substitute other singular verbs for means and the results are (not is ) perhaps more glaringly wrong: “The results convinces me”; “The results is not good.”
And speaking of not good: c’mon, NPR. Do better.
Related reading
All OCA NPR posts (Pinboard)
[I will soon have to revise my keyboard shortcut for GMAU . Garner’s Modern English Usage , the re-named fourth edition, will be published next month.]
Wednesday, March 16, 2016
NPR, sheesh
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