Variety: is or are?

Juliana

Juliana

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There is an extensive variety of activities...
or
There are an extensive variety of activities...?

I can't find a definitive explanation online. Does anyone know?

Thanks!
 
There is a variety. Activities belongs to the prepositional phrase modifying variety.

When in doubt, try turning it around. Variety is, therefore there is variety.
 
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I struggle with this too but I think you would have to say are, because there 'are activities' not 'is activities' if you take out the middle words

edit: or I was too late and two other people said different things
 
And cue eleven more pages! :D

Truthfully, there are situations in which it could go either way. The collective noun can call for different things to different ears, and in different situations.
 
However -- this is actually the easier phrasing to see it in. If it were the other way around, "A variety of activities is available", it would be much more of a natural reaction for people to say "a variety of activities are available" because it sounds like activities are available rather than a variety is available. And that's one where you might just go with what sounds natural, as variety is a collective noun. It's easier to see it as "there is a variety" because "a variety" sounds more singular.

But if it's dialogue, or someone is making a sign or something, it should be whatever they would say, regardless.
 
The striped one has it. Dialogue allows for fudging any and all rules, but a variety IS, activities ARE.
 
The answer is 'is'. Those who disagree are grammatical heretics!

[It's 'is' because the word referred to is 'variety', which is singular].
 
So, I've had a bit of a poke around at this. There are a number of analogous words ("multitude", "range"). Fowler and Fowler suggest that you can use either "is" or "are". It's a question of style and emphasis - whether you want to focus on their separateness or their togetherness.

As a reference, a couple of people http://thegrammarexchange.infopop.cc/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/340600179/m/3986097462 did corpus searches which suggested "are" as significantly more commonly used, but not to the extent of "is" being wrong.
 
Robert Mackay said:
There are a number of analogous words ("multitude", "range").
Click to expand...
There is a similar issue with words such as team and group, where the singular is used when the writer wants to emphasise that the team, or the group, is doing something (or is having something done to it) and the plural is used when the writer is (in shorthand) referring to members of the team or group:

The team won all it's its home games.
The team were proud that they'd won all their home games.
The platoon was in an impossible position, surrounded on all sides by the enemy.
The platoon were resigned to having to fight to the last, knowing that they would all die, but that their sacrifice might make a difference.​
 
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Its*, not it's, Ursa.

When it's possession, there's no apostrophe (in the same way 'his' doesn't have one).
 
How interesting. I didn't know it worked like that.

Just briefly about corpus searches: lots of people might use something, without it being right to use it that way. Unless you're measuring "acceptability" by usage, in which case we should all now embrace the comma splice ;)
 
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