0

My friend asks me, "Would you rather have no people there, or should I invite someone to go with you?" I reply, "No people is better."

Is this grammatically correct? I interpret the sentence as really saying "[Having] no people is better." But phrases like "Two heads are better than one" seem to imply otherwise.

Improve this question
2
  • Well, There's no people like show people. It's fine. Just make sure your friend doesn't hear No, people is better.
    – deadrat
    Commented Aug 23, 2016 at 4:44
  • 1
    It's fine. You're effectively using no people to reference one of two possible states, irrespective of how many people might be present in each of those states. Same principle as three is better than two, where semantically the reference is to a (singular) number, not the "plural value" of the number.
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Aug 23, 2016 at 13:02

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
1

No can be a determiner in front of a noun to express the absence of any instances of whatever the noun talks about it. It works with countable and non-countable nouns.

I wanted people to be there.

I wanted no people to be there.

Water was on the floor.

No water was on the floor.

The project was completed today.

No project was completed today.

Improve this answer

You must log in to answer this question.