Singular and plural. Partitive expressions

The content of these guidelines is taken from the Vives University Network’s Interuniversity Style Guide for Writing Institutional Texts, an interuniversity project in which the UPC participated with the support of the Secretariat for Universities and Research of the Government of Catalonia.

Partitive expressions

• The expressions half of and none (of) may take either a singular or a plural verb when the noun they modify is countable.
  
  

  Half of the class has signed up / have signed up or Qualitative Analysis II. None of our graduates has had / have had problems gaining a grant for further studies.

  
  When the noun is uncountable, use the singular verb.
  
  

  Half of their funding was spent on software. None of this energy is renewable.

• The expression the majority of takes a plural verb if the following noun is a collection of individuals.
  
  

  The majority of our graduates have had no problem gaining a grant.

• The expression a number (of) means several, so it takes a plural verb.
  
  

  A number of applications are still to come.

• However, the number of, because it refers to a specific number, always takes a singular verb.
  
  

  At a total of just six, the number of applications this year is small compared to last year's twenty-five.