tons of food singular or plural?

[hhg...@gmail.com]

(I'm so ashamed to ask such a stupid question but I need an answer
quickly)

Which is better?

XXX tons of food was withdrawn from commercial distribution

or

XXX tons of food were withdrawn from commercial distribution

Thanks

[Fred]

<hhg...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:895efa31-e473-4fb3...@x21g2000yqa.googlegroups.com...

Were.

[hhg...@gmail.com]

Which is strange regarding that Google gives significantly more hits
for "was"

[Bob Martin]

Was. It isn't separate items.

[annily]

I remember a text book from my school or Uni days which maintained that
measurement unit names should not be pluralized anyway, although I don't
see it much in common use.

--
Long-time resident of Adelaide, South Australia,
which probably influences my opinions.

[CDB]

I agree.

[Prai Jei]

hhg...@gmail.com set the following eddies spiralling through the space-time
continuum:

"Tons" is the subject not "food". It's plural so it's were.
--
ξ:) Proud to be curly

Interchange the alphabetic letter groups to reply

[Derek Turner]

On Fri, 02 Jul 2010 02:03:51 -0700, hhg...@gmail.com wrote:

> (I'm so ashamed to ask such a stupid question but I need an answer
> quickly)
>
> Which is better?

I think you will find pondian differences. UK favours plural for 'the
team', 'the board' etc. US the singular, I think, but stand to be
corrected.

[HVS]

On 02 Jul 2010, Prai Jei wrote

> hhg...@gmail.com set the following eddies spiralling through the space-time
> continuum:
>
>> (I'm so ashamed to ask such a stupid question but I need an answer
>> quickly)
>>
>> Which is better?
>>
>> XXX tons of food was withdrawn from commercial distribution
>>
>> or
>>
>> XXX tons of food were withdrawn from commercial distribution
>>
>> Thanks
>
> "Tons" is the subject not "food". It's plural so it's were.

I agree entirely.

"832 tons was withdrawn" isn't remotely idiomatic for me; it would have to
be "832 tons were withdrawn".

--
Cheers, Harvey
CanEng and BrEng, indiscriminately mixed

[Peter Moylan]

annily wrote:

> I remember a text book from my school or Uni days which maintained that
> measurement unit names should not be pluralized anyway, although I don't
> see it much in common use.
>

WIWAL it was normal to hear things like "six foot tall", "five mile down
the road", "fifteen ton of coal", and so on. This way of speaking now
seems to be dying out.

I recall reading somewhere that the "foot" in "six foot" is a remnant of
the Old English genitive plural.

One rule that does remain is that measurement units should never be
pluralised in formal technical writing, even if they are commonly
pluralised in speech. The reason for this modern ruling, as I understand
it, is that the SI units are supposed to be the same across languages,
and it would be difficult to make the plurals portable between languages
that had different ways of forming plurals.

--
Peter Moylan, Newcastle, NSW, Australia. http://www.pmoylan.org
For an e-mail address, see my web page.

[annily]

Peter Moylan wrote:
> annily wrote:
>
>> I remember a text book from my school or Uni days which maintained that
>> measurement unit names should not be pluralized anyway, although I don't
>> see it much in common use.
>>
> WIWAL it was normal to hear things like "six foot tall", "five mile down
> the road", "fifteen ton of coal", and so on. This way of speaking now
> seems to be dying out.
>

Yes, that rings a bell now.

> I recall reading somewhere that the "foot" in "six foot" is a remnant of
> the Old English genitive plural.
>
> One rule that does remain is that measurement units should never be
> pluralised in formal technical writing, even if they are commonly
> pluralised in speech. The reason for this modern ruling,

That sounds like the same as the rule I mentioned from the text book
above. If so, it's not all that modern, as that text book was probably
written in the 1960s.