Is "details" singular?

Question

Which one of the following sentences is correct?

Here is the details you requested.

Here are the details you requested.

Having googled "Here is the details" and "Here are the details", I've got 18m+ results for the former and 11m+ results for the latter.

I don't think that this is a question of details being plural, but more of the usage of here is vs. here are. Google here is/are the things with similar results you had. — , Oct 05 '10 at 08:28

score 25 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:38

25

Grammar

"Details" is plural. "Detail" is singular.
In sentences like "here [to be] [something]", [to be] is the verb and [something] is the subject. The words there and here are never subjects.
The verb has to agree with its subject. A singular subject takes a singular verb and a plural subject takes a plural verb.

Therefore, "Here are the details you requested" is the correct one.

Usage

As noted by Colin Fine and Kosmonaut in their comments below and by Piet Delport in his answer, "here is [plural]" is commonly used in casual English. Maybe it is more used than the grammatical form where the subject agrees with the verb (to be confirmed). Refer to Piet Deport's answer for a possible explanation.

edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:38

Community

1

answered Oct 05 '10 at 09:17

b.roth

21,782

3

If only language were so simple that you could just say "This is correct" and that was the end of the matter. The fact is that, as Ralph indicated, many people use "here is" and even more often "there's" irrespective of the number of the complement. – Colin Fine Oct 05 '10 at 12:58
@Colin Fine - my understanding is that the question is on what is "grammatically" correct. I don't know much about the actual usage. I did check quickly some of the google results for "here is the details" and found out that most of them for some reason did not include that exact phrase. So I'm not sure that "here is the details" is more used than "here are the details". – b.roth Oct 05 '10 at 13:36
I think Colin Fine's point is useful in addition to the main answer, because it helps explain why someone might read and hear the "wrong" answer repeatedly. I probably use "here's" and "there's" most of the time in casual speech, regardless of the verb agreement (— I'm from the US, if that matters). I think you'd see it sometimes in casual written English, and all over the place in spoken English. – Kosmonaut Oct 05 '10 at 14:26

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 05 '10 at 14:15

1

Ralph Rickenbach is right: this question is not really about "details", but about the phrase "Here is ...".

"Details" is definitely plural: you'll say "The details are ...", never "The details is ...".

"Here is ...", on the other hand, is very closely associated with the contraction "Here's ...", and is commonly used even with normal plurals (instead of the cumbersome "Here're ..."):

"Here's the [details/things/people/objects/...] you want."

answered Oct 05 '10 at 14:15

Pi Delport

119

1

"There're" would be as weird as "here're" and yet you don't say "there's things that you didn't consider" but "there are things that you didn't consider". – b.roth Oct 05 '10 at 14:21
Actually, people do, for the same reasons: compare the Google-count of "there's things" (114,000) with "there're things" (31,900). – Pi Delport Oct 05 '10 at 14:29
This comparison doesn't mean much, does it? Most people would write "there are" instead of "there're". Google-count for "there are things" is over 8 millions. – b.roth Oct 05 '10 at 15:04
I know, i'm just pointing out the effect that the ease of contraction has on is versus are. – Pi Delport Oct 05 '10 at 15:08

score 0 · Answer 3 · edited Jan 24 '12 at 23:34

0

Say them to yourself and see if they sound correct to you.

To me, here are the details you requested will always sound "correct". I might say here's the details you requested conversationally or in an informal setting, but I can't see Here is the details you requested ever being right.

edited Jan 24 '12 at 23:34

MetaEd

28,488

answered Oct 18 '10 at 08:04

willell

177

Is "details" singular?

3 Answers3

Grammar

Usage

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