Sunday, January 26, 2014

grammatical number - In special cases, can you use "one such family are" vs. "one such family is"?

Is it correct to say "one such family are..." as opposed to "one such family is..." in some circumstances?



Say, for instance, as used in this article on gene families:





[...] One such family are the genes for human haemoglobin subunits; [...]




The problem occurs when the family is a collection of things. It sounds weird if you say "One such family is the genes for human haemoglobin subunits" and saying "One such family is the family of genes for human haemoglobin subunits" is too wordy.



Does the problem make sense?

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