RE: Singular or Plural?
Of course there will be idosyncratic exceptions to the rule, such as that of
"ham and eggs" or "tea and cakes," and had "tea and cakes" been asked about,
of course nobody would say it was wrong because it wasn't parallel. So why
did you write that? Do you disagree with the general rule of parallelism?
I would argue that the general rule of parallelism does not apply to individual
nouns in a simple list. The nouns are singular or plural as appropriate to the
meaning of the sentence. With no effort at all, I can think of many dozens
of situations where such a simple list includes both singular and plural nouns,
and most of them are anything but idiosyncratic. It's simply a misapplication
of the general principle.
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RE: Singular or Plural?: From: Bonnie Granat
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