The trouble with being an anal-retentive writer is that you get very caught up with the only tool of your trade – the english language.

For some time now, on and off, I’ve been venting my frustrations in another blog (Why can’t you write/speak proper?). By rights I should keep it there, because I didn’t want this blog to turn into another venting channel. But my linguistic OCD got the better of me, and here I am.

My current frustration was triggered by yet another television journalist who stumbled over the use of plural nouns. These poor chaps, who one assumes are mostly university educated and should know better, are constantly screwing it up. As you will see on my other blog, I’ve encountered some real clangers over the years, like:

“… his entire fleet are equipped with cameras.”

or

“A group of young Aboriginal leaders from Central Australia are calling for an apology …”

Even the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, which should stand as a bastion of correct english usage, is promoting and perpetuating this incorrect use. The greatest and most common travesties are seen these days in sports reporting, where the name of a sporting team is used as if it were a plural noun, such as:

” … Australia are taking an early lead …”

or

“… Manchester United are back in the winners circle …”

The team is a singular entity, and therefore references to the team by the team’s name are references to a singular entity and they should be treated as such. That is, the first example above should correctly be ” … Australia is taking an early lead …”.

Last night I heard yet another clanger:

” … of every one hundred dollars he earns, three dollars are spent on …”

Now admittedly, I can understand how this one may have caused some confusion. After all, the subject here would appear to be plural – three dollars. But would you say “A million dollars are a lot of money”? No, you’d be laughed at, and rightly so. A million dollars is a singular sum of money, just as three dollars is a singular sum of money. In both instances that sum should be treated as a singular noun: “A million dollars is a lot of money”, and “… of every one hundred dollars he earns, three dollars is spent on …”.

I assume I will continue to be frustrated by this sad misuse of our beautiful language, just as I will continue to be saddened by its devolution in so many other areas (as my other blog painfully itemises).

Now don’t get me wrong – I know that any language is in a constant state of change and evolution. It must grow to accommodate new technologies, new philosophies, new ideologies and new cultural requirements. But this is not a positive evolution of the language I am witnessing, such as was seen in Shakespeare’s time (one of the greatest individual  improvers of english). It is a weakening, a lessening and a devolution.

I weep for our language sometimes, and I dread to think in what state it will be one or two hundred years hence.