Monday 26 October 2015

grammatical number - There are no comments / There is no comment

Which is correct?
* "There are no comments."
* "There is no comment."



Which would you use for a web application, i.e. what to display when a blog post or an article has no comment attached?



Actually, I am trying to fix an application that says: "There is no comments" ! Would that ever be right??



More generally speaking, it feels wrong to have a plural after the negative no/none or with the preposition "without" (see my previous question). Those words imply zero, i.e. less than 1, while plural is 2 or more. Yet, I know that phrases like "There are no comments." or "He is without friends." are common. It seems illogical to me.



Are the majority of people making a grammar mistake when using such expressions, or else can you explain why this is correct?

No comments:

Post a Comment