21st Century Grammar Handbook Read Online Free PDF Page A

small, but some of them are tricky to work with. All these factors and others can complicate the process of making verb and subject agree. Let’s look at some specific examples of problems.
A GREEMENT OF S UBJECT AND V ERB
    REMOTE SUBJECT . It is easy to fall into the trap of making a
verb
agree with the closest
noun
even though that word is not the
subject
of the
sentence.
WRONG: “The book containing lists of names and addresses often include errors.” RIGHT: “The book … includes errors.” WRONG: “Many people standing in the line around the theater is impatient.” RIGHT: “Many people … are impatient.” Only careful rereading and revising will catch and correct these errors. Note that many nouns that end in “S” are
plural,
but not all. “People” is a plural word. There are also many singular words that end in “s”: “electronics,” “physics,” “mattress,” and so on. Andremember that some verbs do not form
third-person
singulars with “s”: “the man has” “the woman is.”
    TITLES OR WORDS AS SUBJECT.
Titles
of works or words treated as things in themselves agree with singular
verbs
even if they contain
plurals
or compound
subjects: “War and Peace
is a novel in which war and peace are the subjects discussed.” “‘Words’ is the plural of word.”
    INVERTED SUBJECTS . One way to enliven
sentences
is to change the expected
order of words
by putting the
verb
first—to invert the sentence. When you flip verb and
subject,
be sure that the verb agrees with the following
noun or pronoun
subject rather than any preceding nouns or pronouns: “Near the cat stand five pigeons.” A form of
inversion
is to begin sentences with a general word like “there” and
“is” or “are.”
It is tempting and a common mistake to begin all such sentences with the singular verb, although the following subject is often plural. WRONG: “There is five pigeons near the cat.” RIGHT: “There are five pigeons near the cat.”
    SUBJECTS LINKED BY “AND .” In most cases,
subjects
that consist of two or more
nouns or pronouns
linked by
“and”
are
plural.
However, in some cases the pairing of words with “and” indicates a unity so tight that the words are meant to be a single thing and thus agree with a singular form of the verb: “Bacon and eggs is a traditional breakfast.” “The bacon and the eggs are on the plate.”
    SUBJECTS LINKED BY “OR,” “EITHER,” “NEITHER,” AND “NOR.”
Subjects
tied together by the
conjunctions “or,”
“nor,” “either,” and
“neither”
are not of equal weight. The
verbs
that follow such compound subjects agree with the second
noun
or
pronoun
of the linked pair: “Either my roommates or I am going to flunk out.” “Neither the cows nor the horse stays out in the rain.” Generally, the
plural
of the pair should be the second subject linked and followed by a plural verb to avoid leading an
audience
to think plural first and then have to shift into singular later. A singular subject linked to a plural and followed by a plural verb somehow sounds more natural to an audience used to finding more than one subject, however linked, followed by a plural verb.
    SUBJECTS THAT CAN BE EITHER PLURAL OR SINGULAR. Some
collective nouns
that stand for groups of things or people can be treated as either singular or
plural
subjects. American English normally takes these words to be singular and matches them to singular
verbs
unless special
emphasis
is being placed on the activity of the individuals in the collective, in which case they can be joined to a plural verb. It is probably better to rewrite such plural use of collectives rather than make your
audience
wonder what you mean. But if a collective in the plural sense seems the best way to convey your idea, such agreements are possible: “The team plays well on weekends.” “Today the team are going to their homes for a rest.” The second
sentence
is grammatically defensible, but it seems a bit