So "the Celtics has played well" is correct also? Hmm...

Well in that case they use a plural noun for the team name, so it wouldn't be correct. But that gives me pause about the Heat too, since it's not a countable thing used for their name.

AmE/CE and BrE handle that differently.

They agree on "Celtics have" because it's a plural proper noun.

In the case of something like The Heat, it seems my initial response was right for American usage.

This not at all true man. I'd explain why but I'm watching the game so would prefer to ask you why it's not true.

Sorry that's not true, either. Both are acceptable.

In this case you can clearly be referring to multiple players as well as the team as a single unit.

Already covered.

In the US it comes down to what you would do with the word under other circumstances. You would say "the heat is hot" so it should be "the Heat is playing well". Similarly, you would say "Miami is in Florida" so it is "Miami has played really well tonight".

It's not official, and perhaps it's pretentious, but with soccer teams a lot of people just use the British (international?) style and always make them plural - "Spain are Euro 2012 favorites."

Not at all. Although very eloquently depicted, as usual, from lagdonk, it's not really relevant.

The reason is simply whether you perceive it as a single unit or not.

Sports teams are the obvious examples.

Bands too. We covered this topic quite a while ago. Search the thread for "the Beatles" and you'll see the same discussion.

She is one of the girls who has/have passed the anal test.

Using present perfect implies either (a) the test was recent, or (b) the test is ongoing

Using past simple means the test was a one off occasion.

In other news, to pick up an earlier thread, I am officially notifying you fools that I intend to file a patent for my proposed innovation in punctuation, the "heavy" or "armored" comma, designating an intermediate pause between a full period and a standard comma, filling a need for which my own writing has cried out repeatedly, and others' too I imagine, semi-colons and dashes and ellipses having proven inadequate substitutes.

No graphical representation of this mark exists yet; I'm thinking of commissioning some enterprising designer. My current concept has it resembling a regular comma, but with a longer secondary tail, if you will, commencing with the first one at the top, but then running down slightly to the right of the original, like a flatter sibling, before curling left and terminating exactly horizontal with the primary tail, just a few pixels lower.

Fascinating, right? Steal it and my future army of lawyers will destroy you.

If one tries to combine two independent clauses with the "armored" comma, is it an "armored comma splice", or nothing bad?

Yes, it should (typically) count as a splice; we're not looking to displace the semi-colon, after all.

(Oh, and in my description of the armored comma's visual appearance, please amend "exactly horizontal" to "exactly vertical." Too much heat of the moment, there.)

Lagdonk,

Please use it in a sentence, with "^" where the new piece of machinery will go.

I'd like to practice my design skills, so I'll volunteer. One of the goals should be maintaining the simple aesthetic of the oft-used punctuation marks while avoiding blandness and giving it a fresh twist. With that goal in mind, I've come up with this:


I'll use it in a sentence in this sentence, actually.

edit: When this mark gets added to every alphabetical font set, somewhere in the next year or so I imagine, its nadir will lie slightly below the line, much like a comma or semicolon's.

Alright, I'll try an example. And let's use ",," to indicate heavy commas; that way they'll at least resemble regular commas, and not leap out as much visually.

Old school:

New:

Traditionally, in passages like this one, where speech-like gradations of pausing are important to the feel of the thing, if you don't want your prose littered with sentence fragments due to period overuse, you don't have clear alternatives. You can replace the periods with regular commas, sure, but this misrepresents or confuses the differently weighted pauses at various points in the sentence. "He hadn't done it in a while, was the only snag, not with new people, anyway, and not jumping in ..." has all these commas in it, but you're supposed to pause longer for some than others, and after a while it's messy keeping track, and the commas start incorrectly suggesting a uniform interval.

With the heavy comma, problem solved,, and I'm sure there are other types of writing situations where it would come in handy, but I don't want to clutter up this thread too much.

P.S. Yes: one can suggest dashes or ellipses or rephrasing to substitute for excessive period use, but trust me, those things introduce their own messes.

Lagdonk,

I don't see why em dashes wouldn't work there.

Also, I'm using "have" with the heat and beatles allday erryday.

It's a combination of things. Em dashes have multiple uses, and they're most often deployed, in my experience at least, to mark off asides or somewhat related tangents / phrases within a larger sentence. You can also use them to serve colon-like (lol) and pause-like functions, and how often this is done will vary depending in part on a publisher's style rules and whatnot. Anyway, my concern is that you can easily start having em dashes all over the ****ing place, pulling double and triple duty as brackets for asides, as informal colons, and as comma-like delays. This can make for a visually hectic and needlessly confusing reading experience. You might easily mistake one use for another, misinterpret a sequential elaboration as an embedded parenthetical remark, and so backtrack and pause and fuss over these needlessly ambiguous punctuation moments. Which ain't that surprising an outcome when you have too few punctuation marks in the language for the sorts of services you typically need.

That's why State Farm is proud to get behind the armored comma,, because sometimes the world doesn't make a lick of sense, folks,, and aren't we all just people? State Farm. Just people,, approximately.

Normal comma,, armored comma, design a,, armored comma, design b.

Sweet delicate offspring plucked from the void. *sniff*

It looks like a comma that has a penis.

Which, right away, gets us the penis-lover vote. I hear that's a lot of people.

Reading the whole thread will tilt me way too much.

"Should of" is my number one hate.