grammatical number - "There are no comments" vs. "There is no comment"

Which is correct?

1. There are no comments.


2. There is no comment.

Which would you use for a web application, i.e. what to display when a blog post or an article has no comment attached?

Actually, I am trying to fix an application that says: "There is no comments"! Would that ever be right?

More generally speaking, it feels wrong to have a plural after the negative no/none or with the preposition without (see my previous question "Without reason" or "Without reasons"?). Those words imply zero, i.e. less than one, while plural is two or more. Yet, I know that phrases like "There are no comments" or "He is without friends" are common. It seems illogical to me.

Are the majority of people making a grammar mistake when using such expressions, or else can you explain why this is correct?

Answer

"No comments" is correct, and this construction is common in English. For example, we get singular agreement for number for the value of 1, and plural agreement for anything else.

• 5 pizzas


• 1.5 pizzas


• 1 pizza


• 0.5 pizzas


• 0 pizzas

This extends to "no" as well.

Using "no" combined with a singular is possible, but implies that there would only be either one of that thing, or nothing. This is much more rare (though it comes up from time to time). You might read in the newspaper, "When asked about the situation, the press secretary had no comment." Here it is singular because you either have a comment about a matter, or you don't. If you say a lot of things, it is still considered one comment (at least in the journalistic sense of the word).