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Comment by uuilly | Hacker News Reader

Did he mean to say "Techcruch are full of shit" instead of "Techcrunch is full of shit?" Is there an inside joke I'm missing?

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In British English company names act as plural nouns.

I usually do this, and editors always want to change it. I never realized it was an English thing.

Either is correct in American English, but it may violate a style guidelines. It generally hinges on whether you consider Techcrunch a group of people or a monolithic entity.

I'm always personifying companies, reading it back, realising Americans won't like it, and then awkwardly trying to rephrase it to avoid the issue.

And the article considers them to be a bunch...

I have the same problem, I just don't approve of 'style' when it comes to writing. There are lots of personal style and it does amazing, but there are company style guides and printing houses all have different ones.

I have a serious problem using '...' in writing unless it's from the person's mouth. I always learnt if someone says something directly to you then use '...' and if it comes indirect you use "..." so all novels should use "..." because it's fiction and was never said. Yet so many printing houses have gone away from using "..." and have switched to using the quotation form '...'.

I'm unsure why I get worked up over this, I guess I just think it's stupid so few people have control over how the masses perceive the English language. This is a prime example, in the US most institutions use 'is' in this situation, to such a degree that 'are' looks bizarre and the opposite happened in the UK.

The same is with 'ise' and 'ize'. Using 'ize' is so prevalent in the US that in many words the letter S is being supplanted with Z in situations it's not supposed to be. The prime example is how analyse is incorrectly spelled (even in spell checkers) as analyze and I'm sorry but it is technically correct to substitute the suffix 'ise' for 'ize', however analyse is a complete word without suffix, it's not discussing anal.

Style is not a matter of control, it's a matter of consistency. There are many, many areas in English where there is no clear rule as to what's "right", so to ensure consistency style guides make explicit what a given publication will do in that instance. Numerals for example, are often written out one through nine, but digits after that. Others will always use digits. Neither is "right", but consistency matters.

As for the quotes, I suspect you'll need to unlearn that rule. I'm not even sure how you got there, except perhaps by misunderstanding the rules for nested quotations, Eg:

"She was absolutely furious, she shouted, 'I hate you' and then ran off," said John

(If it helps any US readers to understand the British usage of plurals, think about the police. You wouldn't write "Police says it has arrested two suspects, but it is still hunting for two more", right? That dissonance is exactly the same as how US usage of the singular, particularly when it comes to music groups -- "U2 says it will tour in the fall" -- sounds to Brits. )

The diff seems to be that Americans take a group's name as a synecdoche while Brits apparently think of it as a plural noun.

Would the British rendition be "U2 say it will" or "U2 say they will"?

Only because no one else pointed it out:

I have the same problem, I just don't approve of 'style'

No kidding, comma splicer!

There are lots of personal style

That's certainly one of them!

and it does amazing

It sure does!

but there are company style guides and printing houses all have different ones.

Just transpose the earlier comma to before the and, and you're all good!

I think I'll stop here. Can't help but feel trolled...

I tend to use double quotes, so that if you have a word like "don't", you don't have unbalanced quotes. Ok, that's pretty geeky, I admit it:-)

I don't think it's a joke - I just read it as a Britishism.

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