Hello, Dear Friends.

 

I would like to ask you some help with an exercise from a test my students took.

 

they have to make a sentence plural. The sentence is:

AT RISK OF SUDDEN DEATH FROM FAULTY HEART GENE. (it �s a piece of news from BBC)

 

would you make all the nouns plural?  AT RISKS OF SUDDEN DEATHS FROM FAULTY HEART GENES.

 

or would you make it different?

 

The sentence is isolated from the news, so students shouldn �t take into consideration the article.

 

Thank you in advance for your help.

 

Geovane P. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I can �t imagine this as a plural sentence, I �m sorry to say. �At risk of � is a set phrase. �Death � is a noun, but you are at risk of death or of dying, not deaths - you can �t die more than once. �Heart � is a noun, but used adjectively. If you were referring to a whole group of people, you would say �they are at risk of.... � with everything in that phrase in the singular. Maybe you could say �genes �? I�m not a medic, but a quick google seems to show people are at risk from a faulty gene and not genes. 

 

 

 

I agree completely with Lynne.

 

What you gave is not a sentence. In fact, it seems to be a headline, since it doesn �t say "a faulty heart gene". 

 

I can �t imagine the purpose of this on a test, unless it is just to show that nothing in it should be changed.

 

Bruce 

Here is your same sentence as a news headline

 

620,000 people in UK �at risk of sudden death from faulty heart gene�