Tuesday, 24 November 2015

grammar - plural noun/singular verb and vice versa


Possible Duplicate:
None as plural indefinite pronoun






In my work I am often exposed to sentences written by nonnative speakers of English.
I often come across sentences with a singular noun and a plural verb as in:



No error occurs when the file is loaded.



I know this is not technically wrong, but I am used to the general case being written



No errors occur when the file is loaded.



I suppose one argument could be that if you used the plural noun version, it wouldn't cover the case where there is one error. But to me, using the plural noun emphasizes "not even one" and so is the better choice. Are these sentences completely interchangeable? Is one preferred by native speakers over the other?

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