Working on a charity presentation someone emailed me; one of the slides says:
“One in four adults in the world are unable to read”
I thought I’d just change it to:
“One in four adults in the world is unable to read”
But that doesn’t look right either - on the one hand, we’re not just talking about one person picked out of a group of four people - we’re talking about 25% - a group of people who are unable to read, but on the other hand, “One…are…” is just wrong.
How can I resolve this without drastically changing the flow and thrust of the statement?
It should be “are”. It may seem as if it should be “is”, give that the subject appears to be “one”, which would normally and unquestionably be singular, but in this case, it is “one out of four”, i.e. the “one” represents 25% of the sampled population, and unless the population of the world has been reduced by nine orders of magnitude, that would be plural.
Switch “one out of four” to “twenty-five percent”; give that a whirl and see how she corners.
One adult in four cannot read.
Illiteracy strikes one adult in four.
One-fourth of the world’s adults are unable to read.
Hey, can you read this? And your two buddies? Then someone is SOL.
Actually, if I’d spent more than three seconds athinkin about it before I hit the “Post Reply” button, I would have had the sense to point out that the subject of the statements is “adults”, which is unambiguously plural. “One in four” (in this case) acts as a modifier to “adults” (indicating the fraction of the group affected). It would be possible to structure a similar sentence in which “one” would be the singular subject, as in “One of the four children is a nose-picker,” but that is not the case here.
“Adults” is the subject of the sentence. “One” is here an adjective, modifying adults, and “in four” is an adverbial prepositional phrase modifying one. Compare with another sentence using the same parts of speech: Lucky in love adults in the world are unable to read.
Yes, you could also consider “one” the subject of the sentence and “adults” the object of the prepositional phrase “in four adults,” but using “adults” as the subject is equally correct and allows the correct subject/verb agreement to also be the one that sounds right.
Ergo, “One in four adults in the world are unable to read.”
“in four adults” is a prepositional phrase, so should be disregarded when looking for the sentence’s subject. It is the “one” who has the inability to read, and that is who your sentence is about.
So you say. I disagree. “In four” is just as valid a prepositional phrase as “in four adults.” Viewing “adults” as the subject of the sentence is at least as correct as viewing “one” as the subject. A foolish consistency, and all that.
Cliffy, you shouldn’t be arguing this. You have no case. So to speak. [Hey, when does one get to make a grammar pun?]
Just to pound the point home, one should disregard the prepositional phrase when considering singular vs. plural. “In four” is not a valid proposition phrase, because it has no object. “Four” is an adjective, modifying the noun, which is adults. You can’t abstract it out. You’re digging yourself a deeper hole with each post.
“Is” is correct in this sentence, as others have already stated. Moreover, it sounds correct. If I heard or read someone say “one in four adults are”, the little red “illiterate” light would come on. Brightly.
What Cliffy said.
The subject is ‘adults’. We are talking about a number of adults, plural. We are neither talking about one adult singular, or four adults plural. We are talking about “one in four” adults in the world. That is plural.
