This week the Grammarnator takes a moment to mourn the passing of two handy words: “there are.” They seem to have been replaced everywhere by “there’s.” Had I been keeping a list during the last year of all the times I’ve read and heard “there’s” when it should have been “there are,” the number might be in triple digits.
The example in the Insider last week popped up in the first paragraph of the informative article about downtown art, which told me that “there’s some talented people running around the city.”
I’m sure that if the writer had eschewed the contraction, she would never have written “there is people running around the city.” Ms. Streisand did not sing, “People who love people is the luckiest people in the world.” Nor did Hamlet remind Horatio that “there is more things in heaven and earth than is dreamed of in your philosophy.”
Yes, there are some talented people in Concord. Indeed, maybe there are many. Let us all think ahead before we hastily begin a sentence with “there’s.” And let us certainly look back when we’ve written one and check to see if the noun following it is singular or plural.
On another note, I’ll leave it to someone else to write the short bio of Count Rumford, but the appearance of the “Rumford Street” sign in last week’s issue leads me to append a photo from Munich, where the mention of his name on my recent trip was always received with understanding.
