ARE vs. IS
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I would use "are".
euncu
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Will it be true if I infer from your answer that the use of "is" or "are" may depend on the speaker and "is" is still grammatical ? (Considering that you said "I would" not "you should".)
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I would consider "is" as wrong, some people may disagree with that.
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AS I understood from the posters here, would this measurement be OK?
All the programming are done by James
Programming is done by James
All the processing are done by James
Processing is done by James
All the testing are done by James
Testing is done by James
All the editing are done by James
Editing is done by James
Notice them well you will discover the difference.
2006
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I would use "is". It sounds correct, and there is support from grammar too. While there are several parts to the job, there is no real sense of plurality. So with a subject containing "All the" and with no clear sense of plurality, I would use "is".
All (of) the programming, testing,..........is done by James.
Even with plurality, "is" is often correct.
All the wind and rain is a big problem.
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No- the sentences with all should not be in the plural.
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It depends on whether we view them as united or separate, and there also may be differences between the variants. I see nothing wrong at all with the singular, but the plural sounds easier on my BrE ear. ;-)
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In my opinion, when we use an all-encompassing noun such as "programming", it would take the singular, even with "All..."
All the programming is done by James.
The programming is done by James.
Programming is done by James.
BUT:
All the programming tasks are done by James.
The programming jobs are done by James.
Programming assignments are done by James.
Going back to your original question:
"All the programming, processing, testing, and editing (ARE or IS) done by James."
All the programming is done by James.
All the processing is done by James.
All the testing is done by James.
All the editing is done by James.
All these things ARE done by James.
James is a very busy guy, isn't he?! Maybe you should just say "James does everything around here!" :-D
apiz
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Just want to ask about the word class of "Programming, Testing and Editing".
As far as I know, those words are Gerunds and a Gerund can be a Noun or an Adjective (depends on your sentence). As for here, I believe that those words can be treated as Nouns. I just not very sure whether we can consider those words as Countable Noun or not. But for me, I would use "are" considering that I believe they are countable nouns.:lol:
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The question to me is whether we think of them as one group or three separate things and not whether they are countable or not:
BTW There are two forms ending -ing: the gerund and the present participle. The present participle is used with the auxiliary verb be to make progressive forms (She's having lunch) and adjectives (an interesting book).
Here we have two uncountable nouns together taking a plural verb.
BTW There are two forms ending -ing: the gerund and the present participle. The present participle is used with the auxiliary verb be to make progressive forms (She's having lunch) and adjectives (an interesting book).
apiz
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I agree with you in terms of defining whether we can think them as one group or three separate things.
We know that we have two forms of ending -ing. but here we are not dealing with any auxiliary verb. In the question, we were asked about how to determine the auxiliary verb for those gerunds.
As for your example, usually an uncountable noun must be treated as singular. Meaning to say here that your examples are two different elements that we can count (although they are uncountable!). That's why they received a plural verb!:-?
In terms of our question here, those three gerunds are nouns and also different elements.That's why I chose 'are' to complete the sentence.
P/S: I am falling in love with this forum! It's fun!
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