If you’ve ever dabbled in learning a new language, one of the trickiest aspects to master is subject-verb agreement. Even the most accomplished editing professionals still get tripped up while writing in their own native tongue let alone a second language.
…Why? Because everything is so situation-specific.
Take, for instance, a situation where the subject is singular but is followed by a prepositional phrase with a plural object. For example, take the sentence, “The head of all the departments calls a meeting.” It can be tempting to want to write “call a meeting” to agree with “departments,” which refers to multiple entities. Yet, the subject of the sentence is still “head,” which is only one person.
Or, what about scenarios involving “which” as the object of the preposition? They can get pretty complicated as “which” can refer back to either a singular or plural entity. To determine the right word choice, we have to look at the context of the sentence.
If you say, “The team is playing three games next week, all of which are home games,” you use “are.” That’s because although there’s only one team, the subject of “all” refers to the multiple different games.
But, if you say, “his room is full of trash, most of which is recyclable,” you use “is” instead of “are,” because “trash” refers to one entity—even though the trash is, more than likely, made up of multiple different items.
There are also occasions where a singular or plural verb are both acceptable. One common example of this is when the sentence begins with “none.”
Suppose the noun following “none” refers to a plural entity—the verb can take a plural form (e.g., “none of us like the situation we’re in”). At the same time, however, using a singular verb also is grammatically acceptable (i.e., “none of us likes the situation we’re in”).
This is because, per Merriam-Webster, “none” is considered both singular and plural; it all just depends on preference.
On the other hand, if the noun in the prepositional phrase is singular, the verb must also be singular (e.g., “none of her homework gets done” takes the singular “gets,” because “homework” is one item).
The bottom line is: When you get your editing pencil out, first make sure you’re in an agreeable mood!
