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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Some nouns don’t have a plural form, “species,” for example. Here’s what can happen if you make up a plural:

As Searses and Toys-R-Uses evaporate from suburban shopping centers, thrift stores are shuttering, too.

https://www.citylab.com/life/2019/01/tidying-up-with-marie-kondo-netflix-where-to-donate/580396/

Change them to adjectives and you get rid of the awkwardness: Write “Sears and Toys-R-Us stores…”

That latter is a good example of the rule (usually applied to acronyms) that you should add an apostrophe when you make a plural whenever not using the apostrophe could cause confusion.

We think of “much” as a measure of part of a group of things, so it has a plural feel to it, but it’s a singular! (The equivalent plural is “many.”) So we ask, “How much is enough?” But take a look at this sentence, taken from Bruce Schneier’s book on cyber security, Click Here to Kill Everybody, page 147.

So much of Internet+ hardware, software, protocols, and systems overlaps between wildly different applications.

Shouldn’t that be “overlap”? Nope. Look closely. That list of things, two of which are plurals, is the object of “of.” The subject of the sentence is “much”! My compliments to Bruce for getting this sentence right; it would be an easy sentence to get wrong.

This post isn’t exactly a lesson, but it is about writing. After you read the post, I invite your comments. 

Here’s a passage I ran across:

Plants need three things to grow: air, water, and nutrients. Farmers usually take care of the last bit by fertilizing their fields.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/corn-variety-grabs-fertilizer-from-the-air/

The first sentence mentions three “things.” But the last thing in that list is a plural! That means more than three, right? Maybe the writer should have said “three categories.” But are air and water mere categories? ehh… “Nutrition” is a singular, but it’s not quite parallel with the rest of the list. Maybe ignore the subtle incongruity and leave the plural in there? After all, in the next sentence, the writer referred to nutrients as a “bit.” Maybe re-write the sentence: Plants need air, water, and nutrients to grow. That eliminates the incongruity, but the sentence isn’t as dynamic; makes for a weaker beginning for the article.

So. Hmm. Uh, well, er, what do you think?

“None” is is derived from “not one” and since the “not” is an adjective, you can ignore it; all that to say that “none” is singular. So this sentence from an NBC news article is correct, even though it feels wrong.

None of the 103 people on board — 99 passengers, two pilots and two flight attendants — was killed.

“Was killed” feels wrong because of attraction, which was permitted in classical Latin, but not in modern English. Attraction is when a word picks up its grammatical form from a nearby word rather than from the “correct” word. And this sentence has a whole lot of plurals for “was killed” to wade through before you get to the subject, and “none” isn’t a strong singular anyway (People tend to give it its number from the context. When they talk about plurals, “none” becomes a plural, even though it isn’t.).

Nobody’ll criticize you if you get this construction wrong, but you’ll score points with the experts if you get it right.