2 comments

  1. Now, I'm asking rather than proclaiming here, but seeing as "team" is singular, shouldn't it be "team refuses"?

    And I can trump your "invite" with the even more toe-curling use of "present" (pronounced as a verb rather than a noun) instead of "presentation".  So far I have only come across it at my place of work, and wonder whether it is more widely used.  Hope not.

  2. You are correct about team being singular, of course, but it now seems common practice to represent certain group singulars as plurals (e.g. the government are...). Indeed, my Concise OED even goes so far as to say that such usage is generally accepted these days.

    A real pedant would now point out that, to be grammatically correct, I should have said "You are correct about team's being singular...", but I didn't want to confuse the issue for illiterates by making them think I was using an apostrophe-s to denote a plural!

    The first person to use the word present in front of me in the manner you describe gets stabbed in the throat.

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