Dear Readers,
Here is a quiz for you. Pick the best answer.
None of us ____ perfect.
A. are
B. is
Searching in the Random House Dictionary, I found that "none" is defined as: no one, not one. None of the members is going.
According to my best friends Strunk and White, "With none, use the singular verb when the word means 'no one' or 'not one.'" If you substitute "Not one" for "none," you can see that the answer is B.
But people tend to only hear the plural end of that phrase and therefore use a plural verb.
Read below for examples of incorrect usage of the verb.
Example: In a People magazine interview with reality star Katie Hopkins, she says, "None of our lives are perfect."
Example: Deborah Feldman, author of Unorthodox, writes, "None of the others seem to notice how I feel about them." And her husband says, "None of my brothers are entrepreneurs or businessmen."
Example: On Steve Harvey's daytime talk show, one of his guests is a woman who lost a dramatic amount of weight. She recounts her overweight father saying, "Look at us. None of us are healthy, we will all die young."
Example: When a murder takes place during a Mars planetary simulation on the show "Castle," author Rick Castle and NYPD detective Kate Beckett interrogate three key players. Beckett tells them, "The bad news is, none of you are going to Mars."
Example: Sherlock Holmes, in an episode of TV's "Elementary," explains to his protege that when he returned to London a year ago, he had certain expectations and that "none of them were met."
Example: On "Girlfriends' Guide to Divorce," newly single author Abby McCarthy is given an assignment to date ten men in two days. After she does, she returns for a tryst with a younger man she had met previously. She confides to him, "None of them were you."
Example: Annalise Keating is a defense attorney and mentor to a group of law students in the TV show "How To Get Away With Murder." In one episode, she asks these students to find out if a young woman committed murder. She tells them, "And right now, none of you have convinced me that Rebecca did this."
Example: Even the aristocrats use the wrong verb. I heard this on "Downton Abbey" when the Dowager Lady Grantham and Mrs. Crawley discuss going to a tea for Russian expatriates. The older woman says she doesn't have the energy to attend. Mrs. Crawley counters with, "But you must come. You've been to Russia. None of us have."
Now here are a few examples of the correct singular verb being used.
Example: This I heard during a radio interview about a kidnapped and killed young woman.
"I don't know how she died. None of us knows."
Example: In a People magazine article on besmirched newsman Brian Williams and his changing versions of his experiences in Iraq, the magazine states, "None of the versions was true."
Example: Daniel James Brown, in his book The Boys in the Boat, he describes the brand new shell houses built in Berlin for the 1936 Olympic games. "Not one of these was anything like the shell houses Joe and his crewmates had known." *Note here that he even used the longer expression "Not one" instead of "none." This makes it crystal clear that the verb needs to be in the singular.
Example: In an episode of "CSI," a promotional magnet from a pizza parlor is found at a classic car collection where a murder was committed. The employees of the pizza parlor are questioned. The investigator who interrogated them tells his boss, "None of them has a record,... and none of them collects cars." *With good grammar like that, it's no wonder that they solved the crime.
Well, Readers, none of us is perfect and all of us make mistakes on occasion, including me. But at least now we know the correct form of the verb to use after the word "none," and maybe we will help solve a murder.
