On Sep 25, 2008, at 03:33 , daz wrote:

> Respect for defending the English language, Ryan, but this is Ruby.
>
> Note this oddity in English grammar:
>
>   1) It [singular] raises.
>   2) They [plural] raise.

We're talking about assertions in unit tests here. There is never a  
plural subject.

assert_raises reads correctly for both singular and multiple arguments:

assert (that it) raises (a) SyntaxError.
assert (that it) raises (one of) SyntaxError or ArgumentError.