"Manchester United was in second place on the table until they beat Liverpool on the weekend."
As you note it is clearly grammatically wrong to mix both plural and singular when referring to the one entity. I would probably write it as you did without even thinking about it. If I thought about it, finding the correct wording is not easy. I would probably change it around to avoid that issue. Such as " .... but achieved first place by beating Liverpool on the weekend".
Does it really matter how a sentence is constructed as long as the reader can understand what is being conveyed?. I get more annoyed with the mispronunciation of words by people on the goggle box who are too lazy to do their research.If one is going to use a foreign word like debut, please take the trouble to check the pronunciation. ( sports commentators please note!)
PS I get more pedantic every day but a few drams of a 10yr old Glen Moray and I don't really care about anything!.
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Those who wish to reap the blessings of freedom must, as men, endure the fatigue of defending it.
Does it really matter how a sentence is constructed as long as the reader can understand what is being conveyed?.
The Internet is international, so it's not just native English speakers who read this forum. If you feed rubbish into Google's translator, worse rubbish comes out the other end. Try reading some Russian forums and you'll understand what I mean.
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"No friend ever served me, and no enemy ever wronged me, whom I have not repaid in full."
One would expect the likes of ASIO would be monitoring similar sites out of a couple of those recidivist locations.
ASIO would most probably be using forensic equipment and software sourced from Russia or China or Ukraine (or Israel), as would most western police forces and many private companies. Until they were banned by the US, Kaspersky was the premier antivirus vendor.
BTW, I'm not talking about nefarious tools. These are commercial tools produced by "white-hats".
-- Edited by dorian on Friday 20th of December 2024 10:37:44 AM
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"No friend ever served me, and no enemy ever wronged me, whom I have not repaid in full."