"Total Fees" - singular or plural?

[ward...@hotmail.com]

Hello... I work on a survey where we have an item labeled "Total
Fees." It is a single item where a respondent would report an
aggregate amount of fees they received as revenue from a variety of
sources. Within the office I work in, we have a 5-character
alphanumeric code to refer to this item (492XY). Within the editing
system we have for the survey, I created an error message: "Total Fees
(492XY) are less than the detail." However, a co-worker says that the
error message should be: "Total Fees (492XY) is less than the detail."
since "Total Fees" refers to a single (albeit aggregate) amount. Which
is more correct, the error message with "are" or the error message
with "is"? Thanks for any help!

Juile

[R H Draney]

ward...@hotmail.com filted:

Is the name of the item

Total Fees

or is it

"Total Fees"

?

You have it both ways, and there is a difference...in the first case, the item
is a plural and should be treated as such...in the second case, it's a phrase
comprising a singular noun....

Cf:

This sentence has thirty-one letters.
"This sentence" has twelve letters.

....r

--
"You got Schadenfreude on my Weltanschauung!"
"You got Weltanschauung in my Schadenfreude!"

[Purl Gurl]

wardnine wrote:

(snipped)

> system we have for the survey, I created an error message: "Total Fees
> (492XY) are less than the detail." However, a co-worker says that the
> error message should be: "Total Fees (492XY) is less than the detail."
> since "Total Fees" refers to a single (albeit aggregate) amount. Which
> is more correct, the error message with "are" or the error message
> with "is"? Thanks for any help!

"...'Total Fees' refers to a single (albeit aggregate) amount...."

You answer your own question and yours is a question of
which is "more" correct.

Read your sentence,

"Total Fees is less than the detail"

Total Fees ( a singular) - detail (singular)

Fees are less than the detail.
Total fees is less than the detail.

Total population is one-hundred.
Total population is less than the detail of two-hundred.

Problem here is crafting a comparison sentence. Your
"detail" is a major subject for comparison and is
singular in nature. A sentence should be singular
throughout or plural throughout, unless there is a
need for mixing singular and plural, carefully.

You need to construct your sentence with better clarity.

"The amount of total fees is less than the detail." (better)
"The total amount of fees is less than the detail." (best)

Purl Gurl

[John Holmes]

I would go with the singular, since it is the total that is less.
Otherwise, you would be implying that one of the fees has been omitted,
and so you'd have to say "total fees are fewer".

--
Regards
John
for mail: my initials plus a u e
at tpg dot com dot au

[ward...@hotmail.com]

On May 7, 2:10 pm, R H Draney <dadoc...@spamcop.net> wrote:
> wardn...@hotmail.com filted:

It is Total Fees not "Total Fees." Total Fees is the label we use for
the item, as that item on our survey is where the respondent reports
the total amount of fees they receive. My feeling was that the error
message should say "Total Fees (492XY) are less than the detail" since
fees appears (to me at least) to be plural. However, if I were to
refer to the total fees item by its alphanumeric code (492XY), I would
write "492XY is less than the detail." But Total Fees and 492XY refer
to the same thing (an aggregate amount for fees) so I'm confused as to
how the error message can be plural when using one term, but singular
using what is supposedly an equivalent term...

Julie

[jerry_f...@yahoo.com]

I think it's fine the way you wrote it. A probably uncontroversial
rewrite would be "The Total Fees item (492XY) is less than the
detail."

--
Jerry Friedman