Hehe cheeky for a grammar geek! 
For a non-anglophone, this thread is fascinating !
Perhaps “one in five is illiterate” is also an understatement.
Language is not math. Grammar often does not follow the rules of mathematical knowledge (for example, the double negative is permitted–nay, required–in many languages), so your explanation, while well-intentioned, does not necessarily lead us to a correct answer.
That’s nice to hear, because one in four threads on English language usage is utterly mind-numbing.
Out of four adults one is unable to read.
*Out of four adults one are unable to read.
*One in four adults are unable to read.
One in four adults is unable to read.
People often come across this problem in learning french, always assuming that the noun next to the verb must agree with it, whether it is the subject or not. This is not the case in either language, regardless of how many adults the statistic is actually considering. A collective noun such as team or group does the same, it’s a singular noun representing multiple things. If you tell me the team are going to state I’m going to smack you.
Je ne vous aime pas.
*Je ne vous aimez pas.
*=ungrammatical
Of course, you are absolutely right. Language is clearly not math. What is also clear is that my post was about how our perception of parts of a whole (“one in four”) can lead us to change the way we write, and that being more accurate in expressing one’s ideas can avoid the whole problem.
The “math” thing was a little joke you see.
Frankly, considering that grammar rules are just the reflection of what people feel sounds and looks right, and that language is always evolving and changing (which a cornerstone of linguistics), this debate is sort of pointless isn’t it?
If more people feel that “one in four adults are” is correct, and this continues into the future, then in twenty years the Harbrace Handbook and all the other grammar texts will say that you can use either a singular or plural verb when “one” is the subject. For example, a few decades back it was grammatically incorrect to say “I will” instead of “I shall”. But now “I will” is considered good grammar. Why? Because everyone says “I will” and no one says “I shall” anymore.
When grammar rules are written based on how people speak and write, and when people speak or write the words that sound or look right, then if “one in four adults are” isn’t good grammar now, it sure as heck will be in the future.
But I hate to equivocate when we’re having so much fun. Let’s keep it going! Let me just throw out something…
Um, okay. Here it is: The Pythagorean Theorem clearly states that the correct choice should be “is”. This fact is supported by the Laws of Thermodynamics and the tenents of Germ Theory.
Let me see if I understand you correctly. It seems that you are saying that the rules of grammar (in this case, at least) should change depending on a hidden assumption that is not in the actual text.
I mean, you say “Since there are more than four people in the world…”, which is not directly indicated by the sentence in question, it’s a hidden assumption on your part.
This implies that if the total group being referred to consisted of exactly four people, the singular case would, by your logic, be correct.
In oither words:
Out of all the people in the world, one in four adults are unable to read.
But:
Out of the four Beatles, one in four is left-handed.
Because, after all, there are only four Beatles. Therefore, if we divide the entire population of the Beatles into groups of four, we have only one group, so we are talking about just one group, and we are talking about just one person in that one group. Right?
I think your logic is faulty. Grammer rules cannot be based on anything other than exactly what words are there, and nothing more. The word “One” is singular, regardless of whether you are talking about one in four adults in the world or one in four of a foursome.
Poor Stuart Sutcliffe. Everybody forgets about him. And lest you jump in and say that he was a Beatle, remember that they’re all past-tense now. Especially John.
Stuart Sutcliffe? What about Pete Best, for pete’s sake?
Part of the confusion in this thread is that people keep insisting on recasting the OP’s sentence in different terms, expecting that equivalence will make the answer simpler. Unfortunately, this won’t work with this particular sentence, because the “one” in the sentence creates its own necessities.
Why? Well, look at “none.” There may be those whose English teachers told them that none always takes a singular verb. It doesn’t. In fact, all the commentators on usage recognize that most of the time none requires a plural verb. Unless, of course, none truly is used in the sentence to mean “not one.”
Theodore Bernstein puts this most directly in his book, The Careful Writer. [Miss Thistlebottom is his name for the old-fashioned English teacher full of absolute rules.]
But when none can be replaced by not one, then it has to be followed by the singular no matter what other numbers are entered into the sentence:
You can’t turn that around and say that “not one of the five persons in the car were hurt” or, to create an action for the one as in our sentence, “one in five persons in the car were hurt.” One was hurt, one in five was hurt, one in five was illiterate, one in five persons was illiterate. It’s all the same construction, and it all devolves around the usage of “one.”
Bless you for referencing Harbrace! But you looked at the wrong guideline. This one speaks more to the issue:
Look at the original sentence choices:
- “One in four adults in the world are unable to read.”
- “One in four adults in the world is unable to read.”
You are right that is does refer to a group of people – a representative group of four people. We are not talking about all of the people in the world; we are talking about a group of four who are a sort of cross-section of the world. Out of that group of four, one of them will not be able to read. Find another representational group of four, and the same will be true.
In essence:
ONE (in each group of four adults in the entire world) IS unable to read.
I know that different countries have different rules of punctuation and spelling. And I know that this is the rule that is taught by prescriptive grammarians in the United States. If any of you are teachers of language in Great Britain, Austrailia, etc. and the rules are different there, I would like to know it and have a cite, please.
If not, I will assume that I know where the one in four reside. 
~very retired English teacher who can’t spell, doesn’t preview, doesn’t carry a red pen anymore…
Sorry if I missed your joke, but there are a lot of people that do try to deconstruct the English language and base rules of grammar on mathematical logic or, worse, Latin. It’s a bit of a peeve of mine. English is not math. English is not Latin. So forgive me if that wasn’t your point, but plenty of people do make that point so my assumption is to take the statement at face value.
I agree. And while the singular verb is preferred in our example by most prescriptive grammarians (our aforementioned Usage Panel), I don’t think it’s a stretch to imagine a time when the plural takes over the singular as preferred usage in this case. I mean, heck, 8% of the Usage Panel already seem to think it’s fine.
Personally, while I would use the singular in formal writing, since I am well aware of the rules of grammar, I would use the plural colloquially. It just sounds more correct to my ears. There is nothing inherently illogical about using the plural in a case like “One of every four Americans eat cereal for breakfast.”
I would be curious, in a formal survey of English speakers, what would be preferred: “One of every four Americans eat cereal for breakfast” or “One of every four Americans eats cereal for breakfast.” I suspect the former.
For example, a few decades back it was grammatically incorrect to say “I will” instead of “I shall”. But now “I will” is considered good grammar. Why? Because everyone says “I will” and no one says “I shall” anymore.
When grammar rules are written based on how people speak and write, and when people speak or write the words that sound or look right, then if “one in four adults are” isn’t good grammar now, it sure as heck will be in the future.
But I hate to equivocate when we’re having so much fun. Let’s keep it going! Let me just throw out something…
Um, okay. Here it is: The Pythagorean Theorem clearly states that the correct choice should be “is”. This fact is supported by the Laws of Thermodynamics and the tenents of Germ Theory.
[/QUOTE]
Ignore the second half of my previous post…It’s a quote gone awry.
Addendum:
The instinct to use the plural verb for our test sentence can be explained by the concept of “notional agreement.” Notional agreement is subject-verb agreement that is based on the perception of the subject–whether the speaker (or writer) interprets the subject as a singular or plural entity. This goes to explain why speakers of British English use plural verbs with collective nouns. Formal grammar would seem to indicate that collective nouns in singular form should take the singular verb. And yet it is the instinct or rules of many English speakers not to do so.
Same with our sentence. When I hear “One of every four Americans” my mind does not image one American in a group of four. Instead, I envision a large group and cut out a quarter of it. This is why for many people the plural verb is natural in this case, because of notional agreement.
Another factor swaying us to the plural verb in this case is “proximal agreement.” This is a grammatical “error” in which the instinct is to have the verb agree with the closest noun, as in “One of the bears are brown.” While I think in our “one in four Americans” example, notional agreement is more responsible for the instinct to use the plural verb, proximal agreement also has some say into swaying us away from the singular.
May I add here that Mangetout’s question is quizzical but not stupid at all. I wonder if it was’nt a tongue-in-cheek or smartalec question… like “C’mon guys, you debate this”
Anyway, it opened my eyes to the fact that, in English, a grammar question is debatable, not rigid as in French. Thanks Mangetout.
Let’s say that in English SOME grammar questions are debatable. Others are not. Those people lacking in grammar knowledge (which is to say, pretty much all of us) tend to want to broaden the base of “debatable questions” to all those areas they’re shaky on, and tend to use the argument that English grammar is subject to discussion, majority rule, etc to support their side.
Wherever you come down personally on that scale, remember that certain grammatical rules are fine with you (i.e. it’s probably not okay to have the President of the U.S. conduct formal discussions with the Prime Minister of England saying things like “Me glad meeting you, Sir. Happy happy. Begin we now talking, yes-no-yes?”) You like the idea of having some standard to be followed, just not necessarily a standard that terms your speech or your writing “grossly incomprehensible to a civilized person.”
But we are not basing the rules on something that is not there. Everything we need is there. Look at your sentences again;
Out of all the people in the world, one in four adults are unable to read.
In the first sentence ‘all’ has become ‘four’, and so the ‘one in four’ is almost certainly a ratio representing more than one person. If there were only four people in the world you’d use the same expression for both clauses and use the singular ‘is’, or more likely not convey this information in this fashion. Which takes us to your second sentence;
Out of the four Beatles, one in four is left-handed.
We start with ‘four’ Beatles and end with ‘four’, so the ratio obviously represents one person and the singular ‘is’ agrees with this. This is an unlikely way to state this, you’d usually say ‘one of the four’ rather than complicate things needlessly with a ratio.
Suppose you’d said;
Out of the all the Beatles, one in four is left-handed.
Again I would be forced to conclude that there are four of them because you have used the singular ‘is’. At this point I’d be wondering why you’d chosen to express this information in such an overly complicated manner. (If you’d said “are left-handed” I’d be thinking there was more than four Beatles, which again would puzzle me, but for reasons where I would be drawing on outside information not contained in the sentence.)
Frankly, I think it’s obvious that agreement here is unlikely (which I suppose is what makes it an such an interesting topic) and it’s a grey area. While I maintain I’m right :), I’m a believer in descriptive grammar. If enough people generally do it, it’s correct. I wouldn’t get in a knot about it if someone used ‘are’. It would just jar a bit with me.
The majority of people in the world don’t speak English. So there aren’t any grammar rules at all, then?
Oh, you must have meant “most people who speak English” by “enough people”? But most people who speak a few words or more of English aren’t very grammatical at all, so you must have meant “most native speakers of English”?
Well, most native speakers of English includes babies, elementary school students (whose understanding of grammar is, shall we say, elementary), the insane, and several other groups whom you probably don’t want deciding by their usage what grammar is okay and what is not.
As I said in my previous post, you, like most people, draw the line at majority rule exactly where it favors the usage you employ. I promise you that most people can’t spell worth shit: do you really want to go back to “anything goes” spelling (which is basically what we had before dictionaries came along to standardize spelling)? Grammar is just an agreement to follow certain standards–legitimizing your argument (“grammar is whatever I want it to be”) just encourages more elitism, since the people who disagree with you will be that much able to recognize their fellow standard-grammar sharers, and to discriminate against the slobs who don’t recognize standard grammar. That’s fine if you want grammar to become more prominent as a distinction of class than it already is, but I don’t think you really want that.
I have a problem with all of the folks claiming the “one” in “one in four” isn’t really singular because it represents a group of people. I’d been trying to figure out the hole in their logic, and it finally hit me. Take the sentence:
One group of adults in the world is unable to read.
And compare it to the original poster’s:
One in four adults in the world is unable to read.
Both sentences start with the word “one.” Both sentences are clearly referring to a large number of people. But <i>grammatically</i>, both sentences are using a singular subject. It’s easy to make a sentence that sounds funny, just by juxtaposing a plural noun with a singular verb (e.g., “One of our <b>dogs is</b> barfing on the floor.”), but you get past it by mentally eliminating the words in between to get at what the sentence is saying. I think the same is true here.
Every one of the “one in four is really more than one person” arguments applies equally well to my sample sentence above, but I can’t imagine anyone arguing that it should say “one group are” in American English.
Niether of these constructions is correct; it should be:
Out of all the Beatles, two in four are left-handed.