Marilyn Dalton

"None of my friends HAS reviewed it yet"!! Grammar, folk???

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Lisa R "of my friends" is a prepositional phrase between the subject "none" and verb "has reviewed." Verbs do not agree with objects of prepositions. None is considered a singular subject, thus, "none has..." If friends were the subject, it would be correct to say, "My friends have reviewed it."

However, it is correct to say, "None of my friends has reviewed it yet."
Yaaresse There's something delightfully absurd about this. It's a complaint about a grammar mistake via a post that contains both a typo and the kind of serial punctuation abuse one seldom sees except in Twitter rants or teen diaries. That's almost worthy of a New Yorker cartoon.

Per Oxford Living Dictionary (among others):
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.

Grammarbook.com chimed in on the subject, coming down (sort of) on the original poster's side of demanding "have": http://data.grammarbook.com/blog/sing...
They also point out that the SAT powers-that-be disagree with them. (Not that the SAT, that useless old thing, is an authority on anything but itself.)

In spite of all this, the purpose of the sentence was still successfully communicated: the speaker lamented a lack of reviews. I suppose one has to decide if being "right" is more important than the potential of a nice conversation.


Italiangirl No,Lou is not correct. Lisa is correct. None is the subject of the sentence, so it uses a singular auxilliary (or what we call in fifth grade, a helping verb) verb. for example, "One of my teeth IS cracked."
Michele None is the subject of the sentence. It's singular, so 'has read' is totally correct. This comes via so many years of Catholic school with grammar freaks and my experience as an English major and teacher (33 years).
Louisebrodnitz I love discussions like this!
Courtney Longhurst None = singular, as in "not one." Therefore, it is "has"
Judy Barron It's correct as it stands.
Lou I would say that it must be 'none of my friends have reviewed it' the noun is plural and therefore the verb should be conjugated accordingly..
http://www.grammarbook.com/newsletter...
hope this is what you're asking !!
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by Elizabeth Strout (Goodreads Author)
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