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Possible Duplicate:
“A number of students” vs. “the number of students”

I want to know whether the following construct is correct:

Number of Attempts per Question is unlimited.

I want to know if it should be are in place of is in the above sentence.

I have read somewhere that the article before number (whether the or a) governs the form of the verb. However, here there is no article before Number.

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Essen
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1 Answers1

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Follow the number of with a singular verb, and a number of with a plural verb. The grammatical reason is that in the first case number is the head of the subject phrase, but in the second case it’s a premodifying element. In the context in which your example is likely to occur, number will probably be definite, with an ellipsed the, so the singular verb would be appropriate.

Barrie England
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