The Vine: October 23, 2007
Sars —
I was having a discussion about grammar with one of my friends (because that’s just how cool modern high school students are), and we couldn’t agree on a certain point. We were hoping that you would be able to offer some insight.
If you have one hundred men, and you give each man a bunny, how many men and bunnies do you have? (Never mind why these men have been given bunnies — let’s just assume that there will be quite a bit of hasenfeffer consumed later on in the story). Do you have ONE hundred men and bunnies? Or TWO hundred men and bunnies? I decided on the former, because if you were to rearrange the sentence, you would treat the men and bunnies as a compound subject, but my friend disagrees.
We asked the English teachers in our school, but each gave a different answer, and most of them just told us that we wouldn’t ever be referring to one hundred/two hundred men and bunnies anyway, so please leave them alone.
Do you have any experience with men and bunnies? Can you prove my friend wrong?
Thanks,
I emailed this to William Safire as well, but he brutally ignored me
Dear Hard To Imagine Why,
Neither “one hundred men and bunnies” nor “two hundred men and bunnies” is called for here; the first implies, or at least leaves open the possibility, that the men and bunnies total one hundred. Yes, it’s a compound subject, but the modifier is still unclear, so that argument doesn’t really work. The second doesn’t specify the number of men or bunnies respectively, only says that the men and bunnies total two hundred, so you could have 125 men and 75 bunnies, which isn’t what you want to say.
The point of correct usage is to protect and promote clarity, so: you have one hundred men and one hundred bunnies. Or you have one hundred men, each of whom has a bunny.
Or you have one very very tiny little bunny who fits in your hand. Aw.
Tags: grammar rando
