Thanks for the replies, folks. Some specific responses:
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Originally Posted by Hitch
Harry, it depends. The subject isn't the one boy; it's the statistic, isn't it? The "1 in 6 boys," not the one? Is "one" the noun and subject, or is "boys" the noun and subject?
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The subject is actually a noun that is implied, and not visible in the sentence. The phrase in full is in fact "1 boy out of 6 boys", which boils down to "1 boy" being the subject. Similarly, you could express the phrase as "1 boy in 6", which still makes "1 boy" the subject. So yeah, the subject is singular.
Quote:
Originally Posted by WillAdams
There are more than 6 boys in Australia, so more than 1 boy is a statistic.
One of my six friends is short.
On average, one out of six boys that I know are short.
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It seems clear to me that in your last sentence the "out of six boys: is a modifier, and so is a subordinate phrase; the main structure of the sentence is "one (out of six boys that I know) are short" — "one are short" obviously doesn't work.
Quote:
Originally Posted by samhy
If it were me, with my French background, I would use "is" because it's referring to the sentence subject "one in six".
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I agree with your points, samhy. There seems to be a tendency in modern English to treat collective nouns as plural, treating them as if the sentence is speaking about the multiple elements in the collective, rather than the collective itself. That's a break with traditional grammar, but it's growing in usage.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ApK
Slightly off topic, but isn't the convention to spell out numbers less than ten, i.e., "one in six" rather than "1 in 6?"
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Yes you're right. The reason I didn't change it is there seems to be a convention, certainly with websites and things like PowerPoint presentations (!!) to put statistics as numerals, even when they're single digits, because the emaning and import is more immediately accessible.
Quote:
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FWIW, I think that "are" is correct and, perhaps more importantly, it sounds better. To my American ears, anyway.
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Which is why I mentioned vernacular usage. I think it's become a question of which one most people are more used to hearing, rather than which one is necessarily "correct".[/QUOTE]
I may suggest to the bloke that he reword the sentence. But he wants it as brief as possible, and I don't think he wants to change it. It's his site!
For my part, I've found the comments really useful and interesting, so thanks.
