grammatical number - Subject singular or plural?

I got really confused reading conflicting grammar rules for sentences such as below:

• First one:

  
  
  

  
  
  

  A number of people is/are going to the party.

  
  

  
  
  

  Here, the subject is "A number". Since "A number" is plural, the the correct answer must be

  
  
  

  
  

  A number of people are going to the party.

  
  




• Second one:

  
  
  
  

  
  

  His collections of music is/are good.

  
  

  
  
  

  Here, the subject is "Collections of music". Since "collections" is a plural, the correct answer must be:

  
  
  

  
  

  His collections of music are good.

  
  




• Third one:

  
  
  
  

  
  

  His collection of music is/are good.

  
  

  
  
  

  Going by my previous rule, since the subject here is "collection of music", which is singular, the correct answer must be:

  
  
  

  
  

  His collection of music is good

  
  

But I have seen answers that state the right answer to the second one is "His collections of music is good".

Can someone please elucidate this?

Thanks in advance!

Answer

For the first one, the subject of the sentence is the whole noun phrase a number of people, in which a number of collectively acts as a determiner - a class of words that includes the articles a, an, and the as well as words such as many, most, and every - and people is the head word, which is the root noun which is being modified by the rest of the phrase. Compare to other sentences using related noun phrases with different determiners - for example, you wouldn't think twice about the correctness of "Several people are going to the party" or "Beautiful people are going to the party."

You can also verify this by noting that removing people from the sentence leaves you with "A number of is going to the party" - a nonsense sentence - whereas removing a number of leaves you with the workable sentence "People are going to the party." Even if you take out the of as well, to get "A number is going to the party," it still doesn't make sense unless you're living in some kind of cartoon world; it conjures up images of an anthropomorphic number 7 as the guest of honor.

For the second and third, you're in the right. "His collections are good" and "His collection is good" are the correct forms. My only guess for why you might have seen otherwise is that maybe someone misread the second statement and didn't notice that collections was pluralized, as one normally refers to the entirety of a person's music library as a singular collection.

phrases - What do you call a suggestion/statement that's phrased as a question? (e.g., "Maybe you should/n't have ...")

I'm talking about something like this:

Well then, if you didn't want to get mugged, maybe you shouldn't have been carrying around that big purse in the middle of the city at night?

It's clearly spoken as a question with an upward inflection, and it seems proper to end it with a question mark, but it's less of a question and more of a suggestion/statement. Calling it a "loaded question" doesn't seem correct.

Answer

A rhetorical question

(of a question) asked in order to produce an effect or to make a statement rather than to elicit information:
Examples:

• the general intended his question to be purely rhetorical


• It might be a rather petulant rhetorical question, or he might just be trying to keep me on the phone.


• Kyle didn't offer him the time to answer the rather rhetorical question.


• It was a statement, a rhetorical question, and just by looking at her he was sure that it had made her angry.

grammar - Conventions for parenthetical inclusion of articles

Somewhat related: "A/An" preceding a parenthetical statement

When writing mathematics, one sometimes wants to write things like

x is not contained in (the closure of) the space Y.

The typical interpretation of this is that the statement holds whether or not the parenthetical statement is read. In this case, x would be contained neither in the space Y nor in the closure of the space Y.

One could also shift the parentheses:

x is not contained in the (closure of the) space Y.

Is there any convention as to which is better writing? I suspect that the first is preferred. It has the advantage that reading the parenthetical phrase does not change the referencing of articles to nouns. Of course, this implies that if the articles were different the second construction would not be an option. The second construction seems quite a bit stranger, but I have seen both in writing and occasionally the second one really did seem better in context.

Is there any strict convention on which should be used, or is it acceptable to choose based on stylistic concerns?

Admittedly I don't know of any context outside of mathematics where one would write a phrase like the ones I have quoted. It may be that this is entirely inappropriate use of parentheses in standard English; if this is the case feel free to close the question.

Answer

I would prefer the first: in this case it seems better for the reader to be left with a preposition to remember than an article.

Here is a more extreme but similar case:

"finding (an integrated version of) a formula "

is better than

"finding an (integrated version of a) formula"

but better still would be to leave out the parentheses altogether.

writing style - What tense in a scientific paper

I am currently writing my first scientific paper and therefore I am wondering which tense I should use in it.

I'd tend to use a future tense, but present perfect seems to be suitable as well.

e.g.

[In the first part of this paper, we will study how ...]

or

[In the first part of this paper, we have studied how ...]

syntactic analysis - Prepositions in a compound sentence

Following Martha's advise I am splitting up a question Compound sentences, the punctuation and mooore.

Consider the following sentence:

One of the items that needed a further development was a research on child nodes of a story representing its sub categories being updated the moment the list of sub categories is changed through edit page for stories.

Did I miss any prepositions obligatory for sentences that complex?

If you feel like it's not the right way to use English anyway, please see questions

Constructing compound sentences

and

How to rephrase a sentence?.

Answer

Grammatically this sentence parses. No missed prepositions. There are two indefinite articles that might be superfluous:

One of the items that needed further development was research on child nodes...

And yes, I do think that this sentence needs rephrasing (rule of brevity). See my answers on the corresponding questions.

grammaticality - Usage of “to find (noun) (adj)”

I am a native speaker of German, and I often see the English verb find being used like its German cognate finden. For example:

My students and I find your platform very useful and very appealing
visually, as well. — Source

This just feels wrong to me. Shouldn’t it be something like:

My students and I find your platform to be very useful and very appealing visually, as well.

Can you use find like that?

Answer

According to the Cambridge Grammar of English (p523) under the heading Complex Transitive Complementation:

Many common verbs may be used with a direct object followed by an

adjective phrase acting as an object complement.

The GCE includes the example:

We found the garden slightly disappointing.

This corresponds to the OP's first sentence:

My students and I find your platform very useful ...

which is consequently grammatical.

Among the other verbs listed by the CGE that can be followed by a direct object and object complement are: keep and make. CGE examples:

I must keep dad's (sic) dinner warm.

The whole of mankind makes me angry.

grammaticality - Can "nor" be used without "neither"?

I came across this sentence:

Cummings Motors, Smith Electric nor our subcontractors can be held liable.

Is this a proper use of the word nor?

I can understand

Neither Cummings Motors nor Smith Electric nor our subcontractors can be held liable.

But nor without neither? What about neither, nor, nor? Is one nor sufficient?