Dear Kim:

You wrote:
> Is it:
>
> None have wings.
> or
> None has wings.
>
> (i.e.–none of the birds have wings–or–none of the birds has wings)
>
> Thank you for your time. I really appreciate the help because it is one of
> those things that has been bothering me for some time now.
>
Either is acceptable. Since “none” is a contraction of “not one,” there are some who insist that “none” must be singular. When writing formally, you may want to take that into consideration. However, I personally did a study on this which showed that virtually all writers in English from Chaucer to Shakespeare to Twain, including translators of virtually every Bible translation, sometimes used “none” in the plural. In other words, practice is different from the “rule.”

For a lot more on this, see the study at https://englishplus.com/news/news1008.htm.