There is a cow and two sheep.   The sentence above has caused me some problems. I’ve studied all Murphy’s Grammar books, but couldn’t find a particular rule or exception for this case. My teacher corrected «is» to «are» saying that after a singular noun (a cow) there is a plural “two sheep”. Is there a rule for such a situation? Thanks in advance.
It seems I put a   Bounty assigned by outside party, two lengthy, reference-citing answers, one "-1" (awarded the bounty), one "-2", two others scored "0" and "-2" respectively, the answers suggesting one or the other is correct, 73 comments and no consensus so far - and me, as the asker, lost without a clue what to think of the answers anymore -  this is no longer "Learners' Level" question, so I thought I'd bring it here and hear what the experts have to say.    Original question:  Plurality of verb depending on plurality of list elements  An edit was suggested to my sentence.     There was were an orange, some grapes, two apples and a small pile of cherries on the plate.   In my native language plurality of the verb always follows plurality of the first element on the list. There were an orange,... sounds awkward to me, no matter what follows up. My simple solution was reordering:     There were some grapes, an orange, two apples and a small pile of cherries on the plate.   But that's not the first time I faced this situation and I'd like to know what the rules of grammar say about that - was my editor overzealous or am I trying to copy rules of my language that don't apply in English?    Someone linked a  for negatives, where the situation is more clear-cut ("There is no..."). Same applies to connection with "or" apparently, per accepted answer there. Still, nothing for "and".  It seems there is a consensus that in that if the verb goes after the list, it will be plural.     an orange, some grapes, two apples and a small pile of cherries were on the plate.   There doesn't seem to be clear consensus for:     On the plate { was | were } an orange, some grapes, two apples and a small pile of cherries   Adding more to the confusion is the abbreviated form: "There's"     One last note. In North America, at least, there is a widespread use of using a singular form like "there is" and "there was", without regard for the subject item or items, and this "there is" is often shortened to "there's":           There's three apples on the table!      Could you please clarify this mess?
Event binding on dynamically created elements? I was writing a program in C++ to find all solutions of ab = c, where a, b and c together use all the digits 0-9 exactly once. The program looped over values of a and b, and it ran a digit-counting routine each time on a, b and ab to check if the digits condition was satisfied.  However, spurious solutions can be generated when ab overflows the integer limit. I ended up checking for this using code like:  unsigned long b, c, c_test; ... c_test=c*b;         // Possible overflow if (c_test/b != c) {/* There has been an overflow*/} else c=c_test;      // No overflow   Is there a better way of testing for overflow? I know that some chips have an internal flag that is set when overflow occurs, but I've never seen it accessed through C or C++.    Beware that signed int overflow is undefined behaviour in C and C++, and thus you have to detect it without actually causing it. For signed int overflow before addition, see . What happens when identical overlapping effects have their end-condition met? How do you properly use namespaces in C++? Proximal Operator Fixed Point Property for Matrices $\newcommand{\prox}{\operatorname{prox}}$ $\newcommand{\argmin}{\operatorname{argmin}}$ $\newcommand{\dom}{\operatorname{dom}}$  Recall again that the proximal operator for vectors $\prox_{f}: R^n \rightarrow R^n$ of $f$ is defined as:  $\prox_f(v) := \argmin_{x} \left(f(x) +(1/2)\|x-v\|_2^2 \right) $,  where $f: R^n \rightarrow R \cup \infty$ is a closed proper convex function and $\|\cdot \|_2$ is the Euclidean norm. $\prox$ is strongly convex and not everywhere infinite, so there it will have a unique minimizer for every $v \in R^n$  The crucial property of proximal operator is that $x^*$ minimizes $f(x)$ iff $x^* = \prox_f(x^*)$, i.e. $x^*$ is a fixed point of $\prox_f$.  Let us consider the proof of this property. The first part, namely, that if $x^*$ minimizes $f$ then $\prox_f(x^*)=x^*$, is trivial:  $f(x) +(1/2)\|x-x^*\|_2^2 \le f(x^*) = f(x^*) +(1/2)\|x^*-x^*\|_2^2$  The second part uses the notion of subdifferential. In the proof authors say that $\tilde{x}$ minimizes  $f(x) +(1/2)\|x-v\|_2^2$  i.e. $\tilde{x} = \prox_f(v)$ iff $0 \in \partial f(\tilde{x}) + (\tilde{x}-v)$,   where the sum is of a set and a point. Recall the definition of the subdifferential:  $\partial f(x) = \{ y$ |  $ f(z)\le f(x) + y^T(z-x)$ $\forall z \in \dom{f}\}$  Take $\tilde{x}=v=x^*$, it follows that $0 \in \partial f(x^*)$ so $x^*$ minimizes $f$.  Question 1:  Consider proximal operator defined for matrices now:  $\prox_f(Y) := \argmin_{X} \left(f(X) +(1/2)\|X-Y\|^2 \right)$,  where $X$ is some real $m$ by $n$ matrix. What norm function should be taken in the definition of the $\prox$ in this case? Frobenius? Or spectral norm (induced 2nd norm) which is the largest eigenvalue (is spectral norm even differentiable?)? Or something else?  Question 2:   Can the norm for the definition of $\prox$ in case of matrices be chosen in different ways? What conditions does the proof above impose on the norm function? While working in a Java app, I recently needed to assemble a comma-delimited list of values to pass to another web service without knowing how many elements there would be in advance. The best I could come up with off the top of my head was something like this:  public String appendWithDelimiter( String original, String addition, String delimiter ) {     if ( original.equals( "" ) ) {         return addition;     } else {         return original + delimiter + addition;     } }  String parameterString = ""; if ( condition ) parameterString = appendWithDelimiter( parameterString, "elementName", "," ); if ( anotherCondition ) parameterString = appendWithDelimiter( parameterString, "anotherElementName", "," );   I realize this isn't particularly efficient, since there are strings being created all over the place, but I was going for clarity more than optimization.  In Ruby, I can do something like this instead, which feels much more elegant:  parameterArray = []; parameterArray &lt;&lt; "elementName" if condition; parameterArray &lt;&lt; "anotherElementName" if anotherCondition; parameterString = parameterArray.join(",");   But since Java lacks a join command, I couldn't figure out anything equivalent.  So, what's the best way to do this in Java? Just recently, the right-click context menus in Windows 7 have been acting in a kind of left-handed way. That is, when possible, the initial menu appears to the left of the mouse pointer. When I hover over a submenu option, the next level of context menu appears to the left of the first and so-on.  Basically, what normally happens when you're right at the right-hand edge of the screen is happening all the time - except when I'm at the left-hand edge. Perhaps it's some kind of left-handed users option, but that doesn't seem likely - more like a right-to-left language option, except that I've never even tried to use a right-to-left language.  I haven't checked every app. for the issue - probably only Windows Explorer, definitely not in Firefox, for the moment that's as far as I've checked.  Scratch that - this affects menu bars as well as context menus. The menus dangle down to the left of the menu-bar item instead of the right, and submenus open to the left too. This seems to apply to most applications, but not too Firefox or Thunderbird.  I find this extremely annoying.  I have no idea how this occurred, though it isn't the only weird glitch I've had in Windows 7 in the last few days - see   I assume there's a setting somewhere that has got changed, but I can't find anything. There's also a chance that I've suffered some kind of registry corruption, so I might need to apply a fix in the registry - not something that scares me, but I need to know what to fix and how.  So - does anyone know what setting has been changed, and how I can fix it?  Also, beyond CCleaner (which I already have), are there any tips on making sure that the registry stays clean and sane?  Finally, both Microsoft Security Essentials and Malwarebytes Antimalware seem happy that I don't have a malware problem. Should my recent glitches make me doubt that? Why is the amount of photos that fit on one card dependent on ISO? Combinatorial Proof I have trouble coming up with combinatorial proofs. How would you justify this equality?  $$ n\binom {n-1}{k-1} = k \binom nk $$ where $n$ is a positive integer and $k$ is an integer. How to prove that $\mathbb{Q}$ ( the rationals) is a countable set I want to prove that $\mathbb{Q}$ is countable. So basically, I could find a bijection from $\mathbb{Q}$ to $\mathbb{N}$. But I have also recently proved that $\mathbb{Z}$ is countable, so is it equivalent to find a bijection from $\mathbb{Q}$ to $\mathbb{Z}$? GPG Error while downloading software: "Clearsigned file isn't valid, got 'NODATA'" Show that $\aleph_{\alpha}^{\aleph_{1}} = \aleph_{\alpha}^{\aleph_{0}}\cdot 2^{\aleph_1}$ So basically I want to show:  $\aleph_{\alpha}^{\aleph_{1}} = \aleph_{\alpha}^{\aleph_{0}}\cdot2^{\aleph_1}$ , Where $\omega\leq\alpha&lt;\omega_1$  There is a proof that I found;    But I don't understand his proof for the limit case of $\alpha$.  To be more specific, I dont understand why $ \left( \sup_{\omega \le \beta &lt; \alpha} \aleph_{\beta}\right)^{\aleph_1} \le \left( \prod_{\omega \le \beta &lt; \alpha} \aleph_{\beta}\right)^{\aleph_1}$  Any insights or help is deeply appreciated.  Cheers This may be a generic OOP question. I wanted to do a generic comparison between an interface and an abstract class on the basis of their usage.   When would one want to use an interface and when would one want to use an abstract class? Is there a way to switch the mesh selection mode by a shortcut? Is there a shortcut for switching between these three modes? Is there a non written rule to which person to use in the PhD thesis, 5 years of using "We" in the papers have brought me to the innate necessity to do it every time I describe something.  Recently, though, one of my lab-mates told me that I should use I, since it is your work, if the thesis were co-written, then it would be a different story.  Is there any standard in your universities, or do you have any preferred practice. How long can I wait before choosing to counter a spell? How can I modify my hot sauce to make it Shelf Stable? I would like to be able to can and then sell my own hot sauce. The hot sauce I make is a low acid meat (ground beef) and tomato based sauce. I had sent it in to get a shelf life expectancy, and was advised the acidity level was too low and the only way I could make the sauce in a way that it was shelf stable was if I used a retort or sold it as a frozen product. Neither of these are options I can consider at this time. Suppose John has 5 sweets. Is there any difference between the following two sentences?     Jack has 3 times as many sweets as John.      Jack has 3 times more sweets than John.   I prefer the first construction and would know unambiguously that Jack has 15 sweets in this case. However in the second construction I would be inclined to think that Jack has 20 sweets, since it seems to suggest 15 sweets in addition to the original 5. Benefits and Drawbacks of Swapping Associations of Positivity and Negativity of the Proton and Electron For historical reasons, I understand that a proton's charge was assigned the label of "positive", the electron's charge was assigned the label of negative, and, crucially, equations of current in E &amp; M are written with the notion that current is the flow of positive charge despite the rarity of actual flows of protons in real systems (which I understand are mostly biological systems).   If the possibility existed to instantaneously and at no cost, retcon these associations such that protons have a negative charge, electrons have a positive charge, and current remains the flow of positive charge, would there be any beneficial or detrimental outcomes?  For instance, would there be:   new interpretations of physical laws that would provide different or better insights into any relevant subfield of Physics significant simplifications to notation in any field of Physics or Engineering significant increases in understanding in the fields of electricity, electronics, electrical engineering, radiation/radiative transport, etc. a noticeably easier learning curve for any subfield of physics dealing with the concept of charge   Additionally, is there a permutation of positive charge, negative charge, and flow of current definition that would improve upon the one I suggested? Cruise ship in the Schengen area: Do the days spent at sea count toward the limit for short visits? I am planning on spending 90 days in Schengen zone countries.  I will be taking a cruise between Lisbon and Barcelona.  Do the days at sea count against the 90 days allowed for staying in the Schengen zone?