Illiterate tosspot.

About I've been quoted and cited on the Wikipedia page about Russell T Davies, from my review of The Writer's Tale, so click throughs ahoy. Here's what it says:
"Feeling Listless confessed that "none of us have [sic] truly been prepared for how honest and apparently uncensored the book is", observing that "you couldn’t imagine another journalist to get Davies to write so candidly"
What is embarrassing is that just this short piece of text is a victim of my inbuilt inability to proofread my own writing. That [sic] is clearly pointing out that 'have' should be 'has' and the second quote doesn't make much sense either-- I've used 'to' in the middle there when 'could' would have been better.

If I know RTD, he's probably read that himself and through "Illiterate tosspot."

I'll never get a job at The Guardian at this rate.
on

4 comments:

  1. Orbyn10:34 am

    Pshaw. As a professional writer and editor, I can confirm that both 'has' and 'have' are valid.

    I mean, it's Wikipedia.

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  2. Stuart Ian Burns12:09 pm

    Thanks for the confirmation. And yes, Wikipedia.

    I'll be quietly telling my inner critic to leave me alone...

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  3. Rob Buckley8:37 am

    Welcome to the fabulous world of sub-editing! Enjoy your stay. The short answer is that either singular or plural is fine since The Oxford Manual of Style says that either sing or pl is permissible.

    The long answer is it depends on the publication for which you're writing:

    The Times Style Guide says sing in most cases, pl where sing would be inelegant.

    The BBC News Styleguide (sic) says "This usually takes a singular verb (on the basis that it’s a short form of no one or not one), but some authorities say it’s fine to say None of our players have taken bribes."

    The Economist Style Guide says none usually takes a singular verb, but doesn't say when it doesn't or shouldn't.

    But The Guardian's style guide says none should always take a singular verb (although my copy's a bit out of date and I know they updated recently).

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  4. Stuart Ian Burns3:50 pm

    Gosh that's confusing. I've never sat down and looked too closely at the placement of words in sentences -- which is probably why I'll often drift into Yoda-speak, so it hadn't occurred to me that in this kind of sentence the usage of 'none' would effect 'has' or 'have'.

    I tend to just read things back to see if it sounds right, but I do also know that I have wildly differing voices depending upon what I'm writing about and where and the problem I often have is when the wires are crossed and I find myself using the wrong voice on the wrong subject.

    ReplyDelete