A Chara, - Brendan Callaghan (July 22nd) castigates the Abbey Theatre for what he regards as a grammatical lapse in its banner headline, "The next 100 years is about to begin". Contrariwise, I believe the grammar is perfectly in order.
Sometimes qualifying words are omitted, or - as the old grammar books used explain - are "understood". Here, with the understood words inserted, the sentence could read "The next period of 100 years is about to begin". What's wrong with that?
If your correspondent is obsessed about syntactical probity I am sure he is demented with daily aberrant doses, including some anomalous instances in your same-day paper. For example, on the SportsNews page the main heading reads "Shelbourne hold their own". On the same page a report on European Championship Cricket begins - "After beating Holland on Monday, Ireland continued their good form at Deventer yesterday".
We know the confusion here arises because of the dual nature of collective nouns. They can be regarded as one group, hence singular, or several people or things, and thus plural. The mistakes arise from mixing the two senses in the same context.
But what the hell, we still manage to get the drift! And more importantly - talent should not be inhibited by such a trite concern as grammatical nicety! - Is mise le meas,
JACK FITZSIMONS,
John Street,
Kells,
Co Meath.