Question tag — None of the boys was/were clever...

Hi!
This is a new thread in which we will discuss some problematic sentences that need suitable question tags.
The sentence is:
None of the boys was/were clever,........?
As for me, I think the answer will differ:
None of the boys were clever, were they?
None of the boys was clever, was he?
Thanks in advance!

A funny thing happened when I imagined someone saying None of the boys was clever: I heard it in a Cockney accent. In that dialect, was is commonly used for the third-person plural. I naturally heard was they? as the question tag.

This reinforced my conviction that none is usually plural. Thus, were is the natural choice in both parts of the sentence - unless, perhaps, you're in London.

GoesStation said:

This reinforced my conviction that none is usually plural.

Click to expand...

Yes, informally [more commonly, indeed] but formally it is used with a singular verb. Shouldn't we apply the subject-verb agreement when it is singular, in formal contexts, by using: "None of the boys was clever, was he?" just as what we did with "Many a man/Every man"?

Piscean said:

That's fine. The problem comes when the gender is unknown, as in 'None of the students was clever'. Probably most native speakers would go for 'None of the students were clever, were they?'

Click to expand...

I was about to ask about this. Big thanks!

GoesStation said:

This reinforced my conviction that none is usually plural. Thus, were is the natural choice in both parts of the sentence - unless, perhaps, you're in London.

Click to expand...

man of manners said:

Yes, informally [more commonly, indeed] but formally it is used with a singular verb. Shouldn't we apply the subject-verb agreement when it is singular, in formal contexts, by using: "None of the boys was clever, was he?" just as what we did with "Many a man/Every man"?

Click to expand...

Formally or informally, none can be singular or plural. Fusty grammarians tried to limit it to the singular use they had invented for it, but that was the sort of rule up with which the language refused to put.

GoesStation said:

Formally or informally, none can be singular or plural.

Click to expand...

But the Oxford Learner's Dictionary says that a singular verb is used in a formal style inn Br.E.

GoesStation said:

that was the sort of rule up with which the language refused to put.

Click to expand...

The words in red are part of a style which is correct but it made me laugh.

GoesStation said:

Formally or informally, none can be singular or plural. Fusty grammarians tried to limit it to the singular use they had invented for it, but that was the sort of rule up with which the language refused to put.

Click to expand...

man of manners said:

But the Oxford Learner's Dictionary says that a singular verb is used in a formal style inn Br.E.

Click to expand...

It can be, and a few readers might find fault with a plural usage. The highly-esteemed British journal The Economist persists in avoiding split infinitives, not because they think there's anything wrong with them, but because, as their style guide notes, they receive a flurry of complaints whenever they print one. The plural use of none is in the same category of made-up faults.