Grand Rounds Is Up
The latest Grand Rounds is up, hosted for the first time by a non-medical blog, Catallarchy. Check it out for a concentrated collection of recent posts on medical topics.
That just dosn’t sound right. Shouldn’t that be Grand Rounds are up?
Posted by triticale on 02/23 at 06:30 PMFunny, I was thinking about that when I posted it and I wondered when someone would bring it up.
No, it’s correct.
“Grand Rounds” is a singular thing that happens to end in an “s” and that in another context might be plural.
If you are a nurse, doing rounds, the rounds are whatever, be it boring, tiresome, too long, understaffed, etc.
But we are referring to a singular blog post. The post is up. The post named “Grand Rounds” is up. The Grand Rounds for the week is up. And so…
Grand Rounds is up. If you think of it as an object or do substitution or expansion to see what is being spoken of, it becomes clear.
Still sounds kind of funny though.
And yet, these days if someone said “United States are provoking long-term change for the better in that region of the world” we would think it sounded funny. When we went from being states represented by a common government for some purposes to an all-powerful government with vestigial state administrative and geographical units, the “is” made more sense, speaking of a single unit.
But I digress.
Posted by Jay on 02/23 at 07:07 PMA CNA’s rounds are even more boring, tiresome, too long, understaffed, etc; even on third shift when my wee wifey does them. Actually, understaffed is particularly true of third shift.
There are those who say that the switch from “are” to “is” with reference to the United States was the consequence of a war, but really it was a process which even now isn’t absolute.
Posted by triticale on 02/24 at 01:22 AM
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