I was going to add a comment suggesting that it is the pronoun that gives it away but others have now made the same point. For me, if it would make sense to replace the noun by ‘it’ then you use the singular but if it would feel natural to use ‘they’ or ‘we’, then the plural sounds best even if, like Elvis C it can get a bit odd.
Thus, Middlesbrough is a club in the north of England. They won last night and are still in the running.
My personal pedantry used to be ‘uninterested’ which should mean ‘not interested’ and ‘disinterested’ which should mean ‘impartial’. However, I gave this up a while ago as a lost cause.
UTB
Thank you Stoke.
I'm guilty of play-offs, I'm afraid, Peter. Is playoffs preferable? I suppose that plays-off is technically more correct, but I've never seen or heard that usage.
Oh No. What have I done? It was the concept of the play-offs (or playoffs) themselves that was my hopeless cause, not the use of the hyphen.
Sorry if I've taken us off down another rabbit hole. Smoggies on Tour never seem to have this trouble.
@andy-r - Reference a family favourite story on predictive text:
That reminds me of a cartoon I once saw, where a guy is standing in front of an open fire, with his clothes burned to rags and tatters and hanging off him, with is wife saying "I told you not to fart when you're so close to the fire".
The paradox of the less and fewer argument is that it doesn't have an opposite equivalent - with the distinction being fewer is used with countable nouns and less with nouns that are deemed unquantifiable and don't have a plural - e.g. time, work, food etc
For example,
Last week I had less time for Diasboro and made fewer posts.
With the opposite...
This week I had more time for Diasboro and have made more posts.
Some would maybe argue that you could use 'a greater number' but you can't say greater posts unless of course they were indeed great posts 😉
So 'more' is generally stated as the opposite of both less and fewer - While I'm more or less certain that more people would agree with that, I suspect there are now fewer people interested in discussing grammar...
Good to hear from you Johnny. Welcome back
@lenmasterman
Hi Len. Thank you for your kind comment. I never really went away, I've just been lurking and reading pretty much on a daily basis all this time. I've found that by the time I've read match reports (and it's pertinent to say that I get the results on this blog first, before reading any other reports), that everybody else has beaten me to the punch with what I wanted to say. Any comments from me would appear to be superfluous.
You should comment as you think fit, Johnny. I'd be very interested in what you have to say whether it confirms what others have said or not