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Which is grammatical? has or have? or both of them?

I've already read some posts and assume that 'One year and a half' is plural. But I encountered "One year and a half has passed since we last met." When googling 'One year and a half has' and 'One year and a half have', I get similar numbers of results.

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  • Google Search isn't a curated corpus of the English language, and the number of results that you get when you search for something is an estimate. Don't rely on that. – user3395 Jan 29 '20 at 0:15
  • @userr2684291 Thank you for your advice:) – Mcreaper Jan 29 '20 at 9:04
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I think you may have missed the quotation marks in your Google search; the "has" variant yields 53,700 results for me, whereas the "have" variant gives just 78.

I would always pronounce it singularly. You don't have multiple years, you have one year plus a bit. Read it as:

One year (and a half) has passed.

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  • Thank you for your answer. I have questions. 1) Then, how about 'Two years and a half'? According to your explanation, 'Two years and a half' should be followed by 'have', right? 2) Do you mean that 'One year and a half' is singular, not plural? 3) Is there any rule which I can refer to about this? – Mcreaper Jan 29 '20 at 9:00
  • I already know that "One and a half years have passed." or "Two and a half years have passed" is right. My question is about "Two years and a half". How about this? – Mcreaper Jan 29 '20 at 10:05

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