Writing Tips 6

Subject-verb agreement

The rule: A singular subject gets a singular verb, a plural subject gets a plural verb

What’s the subject in this sentence? A list of customer accounts has three items.

It’s “list,” even though the verb is right next to a plural noun. So the singular noun gets a singular verb, “has.”

Here’s a tricky one: We have here a list of items that occur/occurs in an error condition.

Is it the list that occurs, or is it the items that occur?

It’s the items!

So—

Be alert for what the subject is! It can make a big difference in what you say.

Subscribe to this blog's RSS feed

No difference except in how you pronounce it! Third panel:

So the singular is “chassey” and the plural is “chasseys.” I never noticed that before. Can you think of any others like this?

Read the comic. I deliberately didn’t look it up.

Shame on me. Look it up yourself.

You probably get this right, but it jumped out at me, so I thought I’d point it out. It’s a headline:

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota sets June date for office return; CEO says flexibility will be key

At first I expected the plural form of the verb, “set,”but everybody knows that Blue Cross and Blue Shield is a single company, so the singular verb, “sets” is appropriate.

Easy lesson today.

The singular is “datum.”

I mentioned this point about the word data before; I’m repeating because the article is worth reading. It’s about a treatment for drug addiction, called contingency management, that appears to be rather effective. Here’s the goof:

Early data suggests that overdoses have increased even more during the coronavirus pandemic, which has forced most treatment programs to move online.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/27/health/meth-addiction-treatment.html

Note the singular verb.

Sorry, I don’t have a good drug addiction picture.