Tag Archives: majority is

The majority of these second-guesses are wrong

There are some bits of usage that people are more likely to get wrong if they stop and try to get them right. I encountered one of the most noteworthy and commonly confounding cases in a recent edit, when I had to change “the majority was” to “the majority were” and “the remainder was” to “the remainder were.”

In ordinary speech, we generally have a natural feel for these things. Continue reading