Bob: "Can I set the font color? Can I customize the text?"
Frank: "Neither of these options is available. Sorry!"
Is "neither is" always correct or should one use "neither are" in some cases and what are the exact rules? I tried the googles and found a big mess of this-is-why-stackexchange-exists đ
Best Answer
In formal usage, it should definitely be is:
This is the traditional rule (iirc, Fowlerâs discusses this at length). However, in colloquial usage, either option is fine, and are seems to now be somewhat more common, at least on teh internets. A commenter here nicely describes the sort of thought process which probably pushes people (usually subconsciously) towards using are:
FWIW, âneither of us is a cardplayerâ and âneither of us are cardplayersâ both sound absolutely fine to my ear.
I donât have time at the moment, but if someone else is in the mood for some corpus or n-gram searching (or can find someone whoâs already done the research), it would be very interesting to know the history of this. Is the current shift to neither ⌠are a real phenomenon, or is this just recency illusion?