[SERIOUS] Grammar question...

[Justa Lol]

I ran into a grammatical issue earlier today, and this problem has been bothering me the entire day, and evening... I cannot sleep. PLEASE HELP ME! Which one of the following is correct?

All the cars, except one is..

or

All the cars, except one are..

The reason I find this so difficult, is that "cars" is the subject, therefore it should be "are" (because, plural). But it sounds wrong, and therefore it should be "is"... but it can't be both of them. So which one is it?

[techgnome]

in this case "is" ... why? because it belongs to the "except one" clause ... you're subject became a single car. So it is "All the cars, except one is clean, the rest are dirty." or "All of the cars, except one, are dirty."

-tg

[Justa Lol]

I can now put my mind to rest. Thank you.

ps: I totally missed your "you're" typo until I reread your comment. lol

[techgnome]

eh? OH! LOL!

that's why I am a programmer and not a pro-grammar!

-tg

[FunkyDexter]

Agree with TG with one proviso: had there been a comma after "except one" then it would be are because you would be talking about the rest of the cars instead of the one. E.g. All the cars, except one, are dirty.

[techgnome]

Agree with TG with one proviso: had there been a comma after "except one" then it would be are because you would be talking about the rest of the cars instead of the one. E.g. All the cars, except one, are dirty.

That's what I said:

or "All of the cars, except one, are dirty."

-tg

[FunkyDexter]

So you did. I think I missed the second half for some reason.

[techgnome]

It was a boring game, I tuned out at half-time too.

-tg

[dclamp]

Wouldn't it be more grammatically correct to say

All the cars are dirty except for one.

[NeedSomeAnswers]

Couldn't you just clean all the cars and then this grammar problem would go away !!!!

[boops boops]

It would be much quicker to dirty the odd car out. BB

[techgnome]

It may may be grammatically correct, but it's syntactically incporrect.

Dim DirtyCars as List(Of Cars) = CarLot.Cars.Where(function (c) not c.Clean).ToList()

-tg

[jayinthe813]

"Is" because you are referencing a singular collection IIRC

[techgnome]

Unless we're talking about all your base... then it's are. And they are belong to me.

-tg

[jayinthe813]

Unless we're talking about all your base... then it's are. And they are belong to me.

-tg

I was never very good at Starcraft