Imagine this: you and your significant other are at a campus
event. You can’t help but notice another person making eyes at your sweetie. In
fact, you find that you are pretty upset because this person is threatening the
agreement between the two of you. That agreement is, obviously, that you are a
couple.
A similar situation can happen in sentences when considering
subject-verb agreement. In the classic Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style, 4th ed., subject-verb agreement
is described as the following: “The number of the subject determines the number
of the verb” (9). Yep. Words have to agree. Agreement is paramount.
When writing in English, the only numbers a writer needs to
concern herself with are one—a.k.a. singular—and more than one—a.k.a. more than
one. It’s pure symmetry. However, when phrases interrupt that symmetry, a
Pandora’s Box of confusion springs open.
The subject and verb agree in the following sentence: Corey loves beating Michel at Call of Duty.
Or we may write,
Corey and Michel
compete like bitter foes when playing video games, but they nuzzle sweetly when
out on dates.
What no one should write is this: Cory and Michel makes playing video games and coupledom look easy.
Most of the time, writers correctly match up the singular
subject with the singular verb and the plural subject with the plural verb.
The trouble with subject-verb agreement usually occurs when
a phrase comes between the subject of the sentence and its verb. It’s kind of
like another person coming between you and the person you’re dating—things can
get messy very quickly.
Let’s look at some examples of a common culprit that comes
between the subject and verb, and usually throws off subject-verb agreement:
the prepositional phrase.
Here is a sentence with a prepositional phrase that may
cause confusion: Her set of keys is in
the bowl.
This is correctly written. However, some people may have
thought the “to be” verb are should
be used in order to match the plural noun keys.
However, keys is not the subject; the
word set is the subject. Of keys operates as an adjective, modifying
what type of set the owner has, but
it has no bearing on verb. Of course, set
is singular and therefore needs is as
the verb.
One way to combat this confusion is to visually separate
prepositional phrases. Most people do this by enclosing them in parenthesis so
that the prepositional phrases are easy to spot and then ignore:
Her set (of keys) is in the bowl.
With the prepositional phrase obviously separated, it’s
easier to determine the subject, whether or not it’s plural, and then whether
or not the verb is singular or plural.
Use whatever method works for you to identify and ignore
prepositional phrases.
Also, please see the following resources if you'd like further review:
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