Spider wrote in :

On 16/10/2013 11:30, David Hill wrote:
Around £10,000 were stolen from a house
Or should it be
Around £10,000 was stolen from a house.

If you regard the money as individual notes then they "were" stolen but
if you regard it as a single unit of money then it "was" stolen.
It's niggling me.



If you read it as the full sentence it *should* be (instead of
contracting the sentence by beginning with the modern and inelegant
'around'), it would read:
"A sum of around £10,000 *was* stolen from a house".

That's how I was always taught to read it, anyway. The sum is singular.
Only one sum of money was stolen. You wouldn't think twice if it was
10 pence (that) was stolen ... It is only because we say "ten thousand
poundS that we (wrongly read it as a plural).


Absolutely right.
Please see my post on vinegar and chips within this thread.

Baz