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I wrote:

The ability to guarantee that a batch of writes occurs together.

One reviewer wanted to change that to occur.

I'm not sure if this is my idiom (Australian of U.K. origin) vs American or if I'm wrong.

I regarded batch of writes as a singular collective noun.

This English Club reference and others suggest using a plural verb with collective noun is less common in American English.

edit To clarify, the sentence is in a book about programming computer databases and the full sentence is much longer, possibly too long!

Those three operations are all we need; everything else is sugar on top (or maybe something a bit more nutritious, like the ability to guarantee that a batch of writes occurs together).

Andy Dent
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    I cannot imagine a batch could be plural - however a lot of people is confused about this ;) – mplungjan Aug 08 '13 at 09:42
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    What on earth is a "batch of writes"? What is "a write"? – TrevorD Aug 08 '13 at 09:42
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    a batch of writes to a disk – mplungjan Aug 08 '13 at 09:43
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    Of the 5 dictionaries I've checked, none gives "write" as a noun. – TrevorD Aug 08 '13 at 10:17
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    @TrevorD: In the field of computing, this sense of "write" (as well as the corresponding sense of "read") is definitely a noun. The dictionaries you checked haven't caught up yet. – Peter Shor Aug 08 '13 at 11:47
  • @PeterShor I'm shor you're write that it is used as a noun - and I know that it is, and has been for some time. Nevertheless, I still cannot find it listed as such, even in what I might expect to be fairly up-to-date dictionaries: viz. thefreedictionary.com; urbandictionary.com; Google dictionary; dictionary.reference.com (even in the 'Computing Dict.' section); & Free On-line Dictionary of Computing. I had also checked Chambers, ODO, & Websters. I would have expected it to be listed in at least 1 (& probably more) of those, but it appears to remain unrecognised. – TrevorD Aug 08 '13 at 12:16
  • This is a case of a technical vocabulary where a common shorthand is being used. In this case you could say "writes" stands for "write function calls" or "write requests". – Andy Dent Aug 08 '13 at 15:50
  • glad you're all having such fun with this ;-) Now imagine I'm saying "batch of writes" sounding like Crocodile Dundee mocking Monty Python. – Andy Dent Aug 08 '13 at 15:52

3 Answers3

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You are correct. It should be occurs because you are talking about a batch. Now, a batch of what? That is something else.

Wonder
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The confusion can be eliminated by removing what the collection is about. Like, the list of guests is lying on the table. Some may like to use 'are' here. So let's forget for a moment what that list is about and rephrase our sentence- the list is lying on the table. I hope there is no confusion now.

Similarly, a group stands at the gate and waits for the president to come. Or, a group of men stands at the gate and waits for the president to come.

aarbee
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One thing cannot occur together, unless it occurs together with something else. Thus, it has to be "a batch of writes occur together". See Google Ngram.

There are a lot of collective nouns (like "a lot") which can take plural verbs in English. See, for example, this question.

Community
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Peter Shor
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  • I agree with your first sentence, but the subject is "a batch", which is singular. So what is the batch occurring together with? Additionally, I suspect that the 'writes' do not occur together (i.e. simultaneously), but consecutively. – TrevorD Aug 08 '13 at 12:29