A Good Example of Agreement

Agreement, remember, is singular words connecting to singular words, and plural words connecting to plurals. We say “Tom jumps,” not “Tom jump,” “John and Paul run” not “John and Paul runs.” We say “the party is,” not “the party are” and so on. With long complex sentences, it can get tricky.

Take a look at this sentence:

Financial institutions, merchants, and individuals are all concerned with their reputations, which prevents theft and fraud. 

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2019/02/blockchain_and_.html

Look at all those plurals! institutions, merchants, individuals, reputations. And we have a subordinate clause, (“which prevents theft and fraud”) which refers to something, but its verb is singular! What does the clause refer to? Well, what does the preventing? It’s their concern. All those plurals have a concern, singular. That subordinate clause is an adverb clause, not an adjective clause.

How, you ask, can a plural verb represent a singular noun? Well, it can. I said these long sentences can be tricky. You just have to think.

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I like it when a comic has a character who’s a compulsive grammar corrector. Saves me having to do it.

The comic says it all; she’s right. (In other strips, though, she’s a terrible driver.)

Let’s start with some rules

• An antecedent is a word toward the front of a sentence that a word farther along in the sentence (called the proform) refers to.
• Antecedents and proforms have to agree, which means they have the same grammatical form (both have to be singular or both plural, for example.)
• “Who” refers to people, “that” refers to non-people

Here are two examples, both from this article:

This news organization sat down with Crandall at Attivo’s headquarters to discuss the company’s work for customers, which include consumer-goods companies, tech firms, law offices, and government agencies.

Okay, is it the comany’s work or the company’s customers that’s included? It’s the customers! Even besides the list making sense as a list of customers, both “customers” and the proform, “include” are plural. So the grammar tells you, too.

There is this very advanced set of attackers that will use all sorts of social engineering to figure out how to get around the security systems.

“That” goes with non-humans, right? And attackers are human, right? So it should be “who will use etc.” right? But “set” is a math term, right? Non-human, right? Well… the context indicates that this is a set of humans, so I think “who” is still appropriate. (And “will use” can be either singular or plural, so that’s no help.) But that’s the editor in me.

What does the editor in you say?

People commonly put “only” at the beginning of a clause when the word actually modifies a word within the clause (for example, in the first panel below). The rule is that adjectives (such as “only”) modify the word following. Putting that “only” too early can lead to nonsense.

On the second try, this guy gets it right. Third panel. Think what he’d be saying if he had placed the “only” one word earlier, in front of “helps.” In this case still true, perhaps, but not his point.

By the way, in the fourth panel, that’s a rectangular prism, not a cube. But I digress.

PS—Here’s another typical incorrect “only.” Second word balloon. It should be “only last week.” (Ignore the “only” in the first word balloon. It shouldn’t even be there.)

I’ve been seeing “alright” used so often lately, that I figured I had too many examples to choose from if I pointed out this mistake. Besides, I wrote about it at least once before. It’s two words, folks, “all right.” I’ve been discouraged about seeing this solecism so often, so having found someone who got it right, I have to celebrate:

If you want one word, maybe spell it “arright.”