For those who have not checked the Banter thread, the NopeSport Fantasy Footies league has been registered again, look in Banter for details.
Get your team in before the start of the season on Saturday.
Fantasy Football League
Moderators: [nope] cartel, team nopesport
73 posts
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Fantasy Football League
"If A is success in life, then A equals x plus y plus z. Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut" Abraham Lincoln
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LostAgain - diehard
- Posts: 774
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Re: Fantasy Football League
41 teams registered. Make sure you do not miss out, register before Saturday to secure 1st week points.
"If A is success in life, then A equals x plus y plus z. Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut" Abraham Lincoln
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LostAgain - diehard
- Posts: 774
- Joined: Thu Jan 06, 2005 2:32 pm
- Location: If only I knew
Re: Fantasy Football League
.......and they're off. Looks like quite a lot of new teams this year. Will anyone be able to beat Ian Turner? I'm fascinated by the team called Eborarecorrupt. What is wrong with it's owner? Did he never learn any grammar? Surely it should be Eboriscorrupt ?
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Mrs H - god
- Posts: 2971
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Re: Fantasy Football League
Mrs H wrote:...I'm fascinated by the team called Eborarecorrupt. What is wrong with it's owner? Did he never learn any grammar? Surely it should be Eboriscorrupt ?
"...its owner..." (sorry Mrs H)
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Roger - diehard
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- Location: Oxon
Re: Fantasy Football League
Is a team (or a club) not a singular thing ?
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Mrs H - god
- Posts: 2971
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Re: Fantasy Football League
As this is banter we can digress;
Mrs H ; madmike is right "it's" is a contraction of "it is": to show ownership you don't need the aposthrope (unless the subject is plural and then it goes after the s).
I was also taught that a company or a club (such as EBOR) is comprised of a number of individuals acting together and should therefore be treated as plural. However, grammar checkers in wordprocessor packages don't seem to know that and treat such organisations as a singular noun so maybe both are becoming correct.
Now, how many grammatical errors have I made in this post?
Mrs H ; madmike is right "it's" is a contraction of "it is": to show ownership you don't need the aposthrope (unless the subject is plural and then it goes after the s).
I was also taught that a company or a club (such as EBOR) is comprised of a number of individuals acting together and should therefore be treated as plural. However, grammar checkers in wordprocessor packages don't seem to know that and treat such organisations as a singular noun so maybe both are becoming correct.
Now, how many grammatical errors have I made in this post?
Possibly the slowest Orienteer in the NE but maybe above average at 114kg
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AndyC - addict
- Posts: 1151
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- Location: Half my Time here the rest there
Re: Fantasy Football League
Much thought I hate to agree with style guides, I think the Guardian has it right for this one (the Times and the BBC also say much the same thing):
Plural agreement with sports teams actually seems to be the norm in British English, but is very rare in American English; the difference in collective noun agreement between the two varieties was the subject of a classic article in Language a few years back.
collective nouns
Nouns such as committee, family, government, jury, squad and team take a singular verb or pronoun when thought of as a single unit, but a plural verb or pronoun when thought of as a collection of individuals:
The committee gave its unanimous approval to the plans;
The committee enjoyed biscuits with their tea.
The family can trace its history back to the middle ages;
The family were sitting down, scratching their heads.
The squad is looking stronger than for several seasons;
The squad are all very confident that they will win promotion this season.
Plural agreement with sports teams actually seems to be the norm in British English, but is very rare in American English; the difference in collective noun agreement between the two varieties was the subject of a classic article in Language a few years back.
British Orienteering Director | Opinions expressed on here are entirely my own, and do not represent the views of British Orienteering.
"If only you were younger and better..."
"If only you were younger and better..."
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Scott - god
- Posts: 2384
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Re: Fantasy Football League
Yes sorry about the apostorphe - that's what comes from posting from your iphone. I'm back home now - so which do you think is correct -Eborarecorrupt or Eboriscorrupt? and why?
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Mrs H - god
- Posts: 2971
- Joined: Tue Jun 28, 2005 3:30 pm
Re: Fantasy Football League
I think I would probably produce "are", but "is" also sounds acceptable to me.
With my linguist hat on, I should warn that people's grammaticality judgements about this kind of shibboleth are notoriously unreliable once they actually start to think about it: they will swear blind that certain forms are completely ungrammatical, and that you would never catch them using plural agreement with a singular head noun/using "less" instead of "fewer" for discrete objects/using "jealous" when they mean "envious"/splitting an infinitive - even though you've just recorded them happily and repeatedly doing exactly that five minutes earlier, before they realised that that was the point of the experiment
For number agreement with "committee nouns", I would definitely caution against trying to say that one form is always wrong and the other always right. For example, for most British English speakers I think these two sentences would both be grammatical and would mean two rather different things:
- "The squad is looking stronger than it has for several seasons"
- "The squad are looking stronger than they have for several seasons"
[For me, at least, the former suggests that the manager has made some good signings over the summer, while the latter indicates that the players have all been spending a lot of time in the gym.]
Anyway. Just out of interest, do people prefer:
"What about EBOR? Is it corrupt?"
or
"What about EBOR? Are they corrupt?"
With my linguist hat on, I should warn that people's grammaticality judgements about this kind of shibboleth are notoriously unreliable once they actually start to think about it: they will swear blind that certain forms are completely ungrammatical, and that you would never catch them using plural agreement with a singular head noun/using "less" instead of "fewer" for discrete objects/using "jealous" when they mean "envious"/splitting an infinitive - even though you've just recorded them happily and repeatedly doing exactly that five minutes earlier, before they realised that that was the point of the experiment
For number agreement with "committee nouns", I would definitely caution against trying to say that one form is always wrong and the other always right. For example, for most British English speakers I think these two sentences would both be grammatical and would mean two rather different things:
- "The squad is looking stronger than it has for several seasons"
- "The squad are looking stronger than they have for several seasons"
[For me, at least, the former suggests that the manager has made some good signings over the summer, while the latter indicates that the players have all been spending a lot of time in the gym.]
Anyway. Just out of interest, do people prefer:
"What about EBOR? Is it corrupt?"
or
"What about EBOR? Are they corrupt?"
British Orienteering Director | Opinions expressed on here are entirely my own, and do not represent the views of British Orienteering.
"If only you were younger and better..."
"If only you were younger and better..."
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Scott - god
- Posts: 2384
- Joined: Wed Jan 17, 2007 4:43 am
- Location: in the queue for the ice-cream van
Re: Fantasy Football League
Well that is what I wanted to know but didn't dare ask.......but I may be wanting a different answer to you
I wonder what members of Ebor think?
I wonder what members of Ebor think?
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Mrs H - god
- Posts: 2971
- Joined: Tue Jun 28, 2005 3:30 pm
Re: Fantasy Football League
Following the logic above (which makes sense to me ) I think it depends on if EBOR are corrupt as an organisation or the individuals that make it up are individually corrupt.
So if the committee acting together can be bribed (sorry "sponsored" perhaps) then "is" if you have to bribe them one by one then "are" would be correct?
Why are we slandering (or libelling as this is written, perhaps) EBOR anyway?
I personally have no knowledge to suggest that they are anything other than paragons of virtue.
So if the committee acting together can be bribed (sorry "sponsored" perhaps) then "is" if you have to bribe them one by one then "are" would be correct?
Why are we slandering (or libelling as this is written, perhaps) EBOR anyway?
I personally have no knowledge to suggest that they are anything other than paragons of virtue.
Possibly the slowest Orienteer in the NE but maybe above average at 114kg
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AndyC - addict
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Re: Fantasy Football League
I have no interest in football but am desperate to find out why! I have my suspicions...
Last edited by Becks on Tue Aug 16, 2011 1:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Will? We've got proper fire now!
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Becks - god
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Re: Fantasy Football League
I think Ant makes an excellent semantic point - how can we know whether the "alleged" corruption is institutionalised or not - it seems to make all the difference to the grammar.
Perhaps the team's (note correct use of the apostrophe) owner Eborcurrupt (sic) could let us know what exactly he had in mind
Perhaps the team's (note correct use of the apostrophe) owner Eborcurrupt (sic) could let us know what exactly he had in mind
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Mrs H - god
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- Joined: Tue Jun 28, 2005 3:30 pm
73 posts
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