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Singular Plural

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Guest
 Post subject: Singular Plural
 Post Posted: Thu Jun 05, 2008 7:57 pm 
Can someone please tell me whether percentage is singular or plural?

(1) 15%

(2) 1% of 100
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Guest
 Post subject:
 Post Posted: Tue Jun 10, 2008 1:23 pm 
Can someone please advise on this
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RonPurewal
 Post subject:
 Post Posted: Tue Jun 17, 2008 3:45 am 
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ManhattanGMAT Staff


Posts: 7146
this usage is going to boil down to whether you're taking a percentage of something that's countable, in which case the verb should be plural, or uncountable, in which case the verb should be singular.

examples:
15% of the athletes in the contest were using performance-enhancing drugs. --> plural verb, because 'people' is countable
15% of the machine's output was thrown into the scrap pile. --> singular verb, because 'output' is uncountable

with no context, you can't tell. unless you're trying to write out an arithmetic problem - in which the default is singular ("20% of 200 is 40") - you won't ever write a sentence lacking this sort of context, so that's essentially a non-issue.
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Guest
 Post subject:
 Post Posted: Wed Jun 18, 2008 9:48 pm 
Thank you very much for your reply.. all your reply to my "guest" forum is amazing.
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rfernandez
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 Post Posted: Fri Jul 04, 2008 2:47 am 
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ManhattanGMAT Staff


Posts: 386
We're glad it was helpful!
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