<p>This is a writing question from the princeton review book.</p>
<p>Forest fires, long thought to be a detriment to the environment, are now understood not only to be unavoidable but also to be a boon to the forests.</p>
<p>I thought a boon was wrong because it's forest fires, but maybe it's an English thing. The answer was that the sentence was correct. Can someone explain why? Please?</p>
<p>So basically without everything else, it's saying that Forest Fires are a boon. You don't have to say they are boons. Boon is a predicate nominative, or a subject in the predicate(part after the noun). It does not have to plural. For example, you would change these sentences:</p>
<p>They are a part of the team. Not They are parts of the team. </p>
<p>You're just making all the forest fires into one subject, and you can do that. I have not done any writing prep(will do so in the last 2 weeks though), but I was really tempted to choose LONG THOUGHT TO BE, but I would have probably chosen NO ERROR as well.</p>
<p>well, they are "a" detriment so they can be "a" boon</p>
<p>I guess you would say "forest fires are a problem" not "forest fires are problems" Basically, It just doesn't sound right to me. I don't know they technical grammar why.</p>
<p>nevermind what i said</p>
<p>Oh wow. That actually makes a lot of sense now! Thank you guys!</p>
<p>...I should've looked up what 'boon' meant before I asked the question. ^^''</p>