Giorgio wrote:As of this morning, none of my friends have been able to solve the puzzle contained in last week's newspaper.
(A) none of my friends have been able to solve
(B) none of my friends was able to solve
(C) not one of my friends has yet been able to solve
(D) none of my friends has been able to solve
(E) nobody among my friends have solved
here's the explanation in the original source:
https://bit.ly/ahoIxk
this is not good, though.
--
first, the singular/plural status of "none" is a VERY controversial subject.
clearly, "none" is singular in some circumstances, such as sentences in which the context makes it quite clear that a maximum of one person could have satisfied the stated conditions in the first place.
for instance,
james passed by over 200 women on the sidewalk, but none of them was his wife.
in this instance, we clearly want "none" to be singular, since it's impossible for more than one woman to be james's wife.
in other instances, however -- instances in which it's possible for multiple people/items to satisfy the stated conditions -- opinions are divided on whether "none" should be singular or plural.
e.g.
the museum owns a large number of valuable egyptian artifacts, but none of them is/are currently on display.
in the above instance, available sources are very sharply divided on whether "none" should be singular or plural. is easy to find sources that declare that it should be singular; sources that declare that it should be plural; and sources that declare that either is all right.
in the instance of a grammatical controversy such as this one, only one opinion ultimately matters in the end: the
official opinion of the gmat.
i'm not sure whether i have ever seen an official problem in which this issue is decided one way or the other. therefore, a call to the posters on this site:
has any of the posters on this site ever seen an OFFICIAL problem that decides the "none" issue either way?
without such official evidence, i can't make a good-faith declaration either way -- and neither can anyone else.
--
second, it's apparent that whoever wrote this problem is ignorant of official gmat question-writing conventions, at least to some degree: this problem is written in the first person, which is NEVER used on official problems. (all official problems are written in the third person.)
obviously, the first-person/third-person issue is not relevant to whether "none" is singular or plural, but it shows us that the author of the question is not necessarily committed to writing problems that mimic OFFICIAL problem-writing conventions.
when problems cover grammatical issues that are controversial, that sort of thing can be dangerous.
