While fine-tuning my book, English Plain and Simple: No-Nonsense Ways to Learn Today’s Global Language, for its second printing [this was four and a half years ago], I received e-mail from faraway Stockholm with this note about a particular usage in the book: “Here’s a conundrum, Jose: Should it be ‘There is more than one way to skin a cat’ or ‘There are more than one way to skin a cat’? Consider this as a question submitted to your column.”

The interlocutor was my cyberspace friend Niels Hovmöller, a knowledgeable Swedish gymnasium (secondary school) English teacher and educational software developer who had admirably taken it upon himself to help me put the book’s English on even firmer and surer footing. Purely for love of the language, he was going over the text by line and word for word, promptly e-mailing me incisive—and sometimes tart—comments like the one above every time he found some doubtful grammar or semantic usage in my prose.

Before I answer Niel’s question, though, let’s find out first what “conundrum” means. This is a recurrent word in philosophy and linguistics, but probably not very many of us have bothered to find out what it means. The first of its three Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary meanings is “a riddle whose only answer is or involves a pun,” but Niels is obviously using it here simply to mean “a question or problem having only a conjectural answer.”

That said, I will now fearlessly answer his question: without any doubt, the correct usage is the singular construction, “There is more than one way to skin a cat.” As in the case of many grammar conundrums, however, I will be able to justify my answer only as we go along.

We all know that in English, “there is” or “there are” expressions—the linguistic term for them is expletives—are commonly used to declare or affirm that something exists. They came about because native English speakers generally feel uncomfortable saying such simple declaratives as “A cat is on my bed” or “Errors are in your manuscript.” To assuage their discomfort, they tack on “there is” or “there are” to such statements even if many grammarians think that expletives only serve to weaken prose: “There is a cat on my bed.” “There are errors in your manuscript.”

The simple subject-verb agreement rule in English, of course, applies even to expletive constructions: use “there is” if the subject is singular, like “apple” or “book,” and if the subject is a non-count noun, like “water” and “air”; but use “there are” if the subject is plural, like “apples” and “books.” In the conundrum above, however, it is not crystal clear if the subject of the sentence, “more than one way,” is plural or singular. Many people would argue that it is plural because more than one way—presumably at least two—is being invoked. For the subject-verb agreement to reflect that plurality, they reason out that the correct expression should be “There are more than one way to skin a cat.” Many of us obviously would bristle seeing such an awkward sentence construction, but we now have to conquer our bias against it so we can objectively determine once and for all if the usage has no possibility whatsoever of being correct.

One English grammar rule can actually help us resolve this conundrum. That rule says that when a clause begins with “there is/there are,” the verb should agree in number with the first noun or pronoun being linked by that verb. Under this proximity rule, we say “There is a woman and three men in the car,” not “There are a woman and three men in the car.” When we decide to put the plural subject ahead in that sentence, however, we obviously can use only the plural construction: “There are three men and a woman in the car.”

Now we are ready to frontally tackle Niel’s conundrum: Should it be “There is more than one way to skin a cat” or “There are more than one way to skin a cat”? Invoking the expletive construction rule above, there should be no doubt now that in those two sentences, the subject most proximate to the expletives “there is/there are” is “one way,” which obviously is singular. Therefore, the noun phrase “more than one way to skin a cat” that was built around that singular subject should also be treated as singular. The plural usage would apply, of course, if the subject were “two ways” or a number more than that—“There are more than two ways to skin a cat.” “There are more than nine ways to skin a cat.”—but this is obviously not the case here.

With this, I am confident that we have now resolved Niel’s conundrum for good. (March 21, 2005)

From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, March 21, 2005 © 2005 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

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Most of us feel comfortable with the form “used to + verb” when using it to mean a past condition or habitual practice, as in these two sentences: “They used to be very close friends.” “She used to jog early in the morning.” In the first sentence, of course, “used to” conveys the idea of an activity or condition in the past that’s no longer true; in the second, on the other hand, “used to” conveys the idea of an old habit that had already stopped. In both cases, however, we’re hardly in any danger of tripping in our grammar because “used to” is clearly functioning as it should—as an auxiliary verb affirming the sense of a past action or state of affairs that had already ceased.

But using “used to” in negative and interrogative statements, which both require the form to take the auxiliary verb “did,” raises serious questions about its grammatical validity. Indeed, how should the two “used to” sentences above be rendered in their negative form? For the first, do we say, “They didn’t used to be very close friends” (“used” with the “d”) or “They didn’t use to be very close friends” (“use” without the “d”)? And for the second, do we say, “She didn’t used to jog early in the morning” or “She didn’t use to jog early in the morning”?

Then again, how do we put the two “used to” sentences in question form? For the first, do we say, “Did they used to be very close friends?” or “Did they use to be very close friends?” And for the second, do we say, “Did she used to jog early in the morning?” or “Did she use to jog early in the morning?”

The American English prescription is straightforward: take out the “d” from the verb in “used to” every time this form works with the auxiliary verb “did” in negative and interrogative statements. The correct usage for negative “used to” statements is therefore this: “They didn’t use to be very close friends.” For questions, it’s this: “Did they use to be very close friends?” This is an odd and puzzling prescription, for it actually contravenes the supposedly past-tense character of “used to,” but a good thing going for it is that it’s consistent with the standard grammar rule that auxiliary verbs, not main verbs, should take the tense (“They didn’t wish to be identified” rather than “They didn’t wished to be identified,” and “Did they want to live in Manila?” rather than “Did they wanted to live in Manila.”).

Some grammarians, however, frown on the American English prescription. They argue that since “used to” exists only in the past tense, its negative and interrogative forms can’t possibly take the auxiliary verb “do.” To them, therefore, both the negative constructions “They didn’t used to be very close friends” and “They didn’t use to be very close friends” are unacceptable, and both the interrogative constructions “Did she used to jog early in the morning?” and “Did she use to jog early in the morning?” are unacceptable as well.

For negative “used to” constructions, these grammarians prescribe this form instead: “They used not to be very close friends.” For interrogative “used to” constructions, they recommend these two forms: “Used she not to jog early in the morning?” “Was she not used to jogging early in the morning?” Take note that all these alternative constructions take pains to retain the “d” in “used to” and avoid using the contraction “didn’t,” yielding sentences that don’t have the odd look and sound of their American English counterparts.
Of course, American English is the Philippine standard, so we have to follow its prescription for “used to”—but we need not turn a blind eye to the virtues of the contrary prescription.

We will now proceed to three much more lethal grammar trippers than the form “used to,” namely “the reason… is because,” “the reason why…is because,” and “the reason…is due to.” See what awful and unsightly sentences they make: “The reason she’s absent is because she’s sick.” “The reason why he went out is because he was hungry.” “The reason for the poor attendance is due to the strong rain.”

The three forms give rise to flagrant redundancies, or needless repetitions of the same idea, so we need to methodically root them out: “The reason she’s absent is that she’s sick.” (Even better: “She’s absent because she’s sick.”) “The reason he went out is that he was hungry.” (Even better: “He went out because he was hungry.”) “The reason for the poor attendance is the strong rain.” (Even better: “The poor attendance is due to the strong rain.”) (September 19, 2005)

From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, September 19, 2005 © 2005 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

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