Calling all grammar wonks
I had a history professor in college who used to lament the decline of grammar and proofreading skills among editors of print media. He complained that he found mistakes in the New York Times often enough, and — and this troubled him most of all — occasionally in the New Yorker. Well, I think I just found one.
The piece is on page 29 of the December 5 issue. It appears in the Talk of the Town section: “The Tao of WiFi.” It discusses the crazy names people give their home wireless networks.
Anyway, the sentence begins as follows: “A certain genre of befuddling names are meant to send […]”
Now, I know that I have friends who are far better grammarians than I, but as far as I can tell “genre” is the subject and “are” should be “is.”
Who can back me up on this?
