LANGUAGE CORNER
‘None’ as Plural; Hung/Hanged
From the Email Bag
A visitor to the site noted that the item "You've Got to Be Carefully Taught" (below; CJR Sept./Oct. 1996) said at one point, "It's a good bet none of us in journalism do," and asked, "Does not 'none' require 'does' "? More often than not, it doesn't. The word literally means "no one" or "not one," of course, and those are the ways to say it if we're emphasizing the singular nature of something. Otherwise, most modern authorities prefer to use "none" as a plural.
Hung/Hanged
Another e-mailer wondered about this passage from a magazine article: "The majority of the people had not died from natural causes. Most had been hung - the ropes were around their necks - hit over the head or stabbed." As a past tense for the word meaning to put to death by hanging, "hung" is accepted by some dictionaries as one alternative. Most of those modern authorities, though, still argue that pictures are hung and people are hanged.
