I’m a grammar lover.
I know. Nerd alert!
Recently, I read a blog post about stuff.
She said something like, “All of that stuff are . . . ”
It sounded funky, and I knew it was grammatically incorrect.
Stuff is.
That’s the problem. We think of stuff as being plural. The stuff probably does consist of quite a few plural items. Plural books. Plural coupons. Plural school projects.
A singular shoe.
But when it’s all together in a pile . . . it’s stuff.
And stuff is singular.
It has no personality. No individuality.
Hmmmm.
I am fully aware that by declaring myself a grammar nerd, I open myself up to criticism of my own grammar. I will declare that I am fully aware that I take artistic license in writing incomplete sentences. I also struggle greatly with where to place commas and periods around quotation marks.
ah. A kindred spirit. Do people throw things at you, too?
Interesting! Stuff are? I have never heard that before…it does sound strange!
I am a grammar freak on some things, but I know I have a lot of issues myself!
Of course, because "stuff" is the object of the preposition "of", the subject/verb agreement needs to be between "All" and "are." Since you didn't give the entire sentence, I cannot discern if it is correct or incorrect. It is most likely incorrect, though I have little ground to stake my claim.
You are right about one thing for sure: stuff has no personality.
You know you dated yourself when you said "nerd alert". We all know how old you are now!! 🙂
Ha ha! Amy, it sounds like you love grammar even more than I do! The example was from memory, but I did go back to the site to try to find the exact quote. I couldn't find it. Grrr.
Haha! I love your little disclaimer. As a fellow "grammar geek" I try to stay away from writing passionate blogs about it…Because I just KNOW I will screw something up. 🙂
Are you sure the writer wasn’t British? They use the plural for singular nouns that are made up of multiple things – like corporations. They will say “the company are.” In that context, stuff is an amorphous pile of other…stuff. It’s not wrong; it’s just not American English.
Great point! But no, definitely not British.
Even in British English, “stuff are” seems incorrect to me. Like a post like this, Nony! (Bit of a grammar geek myself)
And Oh yes, I’m slowly reading backwards even at this point 🙂
Me too Heidi, and I’m British and I would say “stuff is”.
It’s rather like “much” and “many” – much =amorphous inseparable items (stuff) and many = numerous identifiable individual things….
I’m not a grammarian but I know what sounds “right”! 🙂
I’m an ESL instructor at the college level. We were just talking about this last night- “Everything IS awesome!” Even though ‘everything’ is a lot of different things/stuff, it becomes a singular/collective/non-count noun.
For those confused, test the word. Can you put an ‘s’ on it or a number before it? You cannot say “5 stuffs.’ So the noun is non-count and you treat it as a singular noun for grammar purposes.
😉
A true kindred spirit–I hate deciding where to put the punctuation when I use “air quotes” to emphasize the iffy-ness of something.
I did know that the sentence used the OP as the subject, which doesn’t work, but I would tend to consider the ‘All’ as a singular noun and use ‘is’ as the verb, as in “All is well, all is well”
Let’s just say I have often completely re-written a sentence (or even a paragraph) in order to avoid one of those grammatically sticky situations!!
I hate deciding where to put the punctuation when I use “air quotes” to emphasize the iffy-ness of something. Let’s just say I have often completely re-written a sentence (or even a paragraph) in order to avoid one of those grammatically sticky situations!!
I did know that the sentence used the OP as the subject, which doesn’t work, but I would tend to consider the ‘All’ as a singular noun and use ‘is’ as the verb, as in “All is well, all is well”
“Collective noun” is the perfect category for “stuff” when used as a noun!!!