Another Agreement Lesson

What’s wrong with this sentence?

The isotopic signature of material from the inner and outer solar system differ significantly. 

https://newatlas.com/earth-water-moon-collision/59782/

“Differ” is plural, right? And the phrase “inner and outer” describes two things, right? So what’s wrong?

“Inner and outer” isn’t the subject of “differ”! “Signature” is, and “signature” is singular.

Since we’re talking about two things, though, the subject should be plural! (“Inner and outer” are objects of the preposition “of.”)

The picture isn’t very useful, but it’s in the article…

Remember: the subject and the verb must both be singular or both plural. That’s agreement.

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In English (okay, and many other languages) we have this concept called agreement. Agreement means that singulars go with singulars and plurals go with plurals. I remember this specific example being covered back in sixth grade. He gets it wrong. Can you spot it?

Well, panel 2. “type” is singular, but “those” is plural. It should be “that type of publication.” Or “those types of publications.”

I don’t happen to know the technical term for it, but when you refer to something in, say, the third person, don’t switch to using, say, the first person when you refer to it.

Perhaps best explained with an example:

Here’s the sentence:

China has changed that market dramatically, and their decision has forced the rest of the world to become more self-reliant and responsible in our waste management.

• China—third person; their—third person. They refer to the same entity, so okay.
• rest of the world—third person; our—first person!
• They refer to the same entity, so not good

The sentence could have used “us” instead of “rest of the world” and it would have been okay. The sentence could also have used “their” instead of “our” and that would have been okay, too, but I prefer using first person because the sentence already used the third person for China, so using the first person when you refer to someone else is a little smoother.

So what do you call it? Person agreement? Personal coordination? How about clear instead of confusing?

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.

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?