Skip to main content

Subject Verb Agreement With Examples

Here are a few examples:

My cat seems in need for milk.
My friends and I were walking by the park when we saw Jim sitting in.
Joe as well as her friends is very playful.
Either Sally or her cousins are afraid of dogs.
Neither Sally's cousins nor she is afraid of cats.

In all of these sentences, we have used appropriate verb forms. The subject verb agreement rules that the singular subject needs a singular verb and plural subject, plural verb.

This rule is pretty obvious in simple sentences like the first two above, but the others seem to need some more clarification.

1. As Well As

When combining any two subjects with as well as, always agree the verb with the first subject. Examples:

Jim as well as his friends is a good swimmer.
Jim's friends as well as Jim are good swimmers.
Emmerich's films as well as Spielberg's are interesting to me.

2. Either (Neither) Or

When combining subjects with 'or', always agree with the subject nearest to the verb.

Either Bill or his family members have to approve it.
Neither his dogs nor his cat has any disease.

3. Agreement Related to Person

First and second persons always takes plural verb, except when using 'was' with first person.

I take it you granted the permission for the play?
I have found it interesting.
I was having my meal when you came in yesterday.
I was there but missed your performance.
Were you in college yesterday?
You are a good student.

Third person subjects always take the verb according to the number.

He is a good student.
Jim and Harry are good in singing.
They were talking about the latest movies.
These cats are mine, and that is Joe's.

4. Take the Actual Subject When Considering Verb Type

Some sentences such as the following may be misleading to most.

The apples bought by Joe, afterwards washed by Sarah, and eaten by Jim, are responsible for his illness.

Here, the subject of the verb is 'apples' and not Joe, Sarah, or Jim.

Carefully consider which is the subject before applying the verb. Here are a few such examples:

The rules set forth by the Indian Constitution don't allow internal transfer of money not done through any RBI approved authority.
The viewpoint of hundreds of members of the opposition reflects that of less than fifty per cent of the public.
The success rate of more than fifty schools and colleges in my state seems to be high.

5. Certain Collective Nouns Take Singular Verb

Certain nouns, which always have come together, may take singular verbs. Examples:

Bread and butter is what he takes in the morning.

That's it folks!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

En Dash, Em Dash, and Hyphen

We have three types of dashes in use: The hyphen, En Dash, and the Em Dash. In this post, we will see how to use them all correctly. Hyphen (-) The hyphen is the minus key in Windows-based keyboards. This is a widely used punctuation mark. Hyphen should not be mistaken for a dash . Dash is different and has different function than a hyphen. A hyphen is used to separate the words in a compound adjective, verb, or adverb. For instance: The T-rex has a movement-based vision. My blog is blogger-powered. John’s idea was pooh-poohed. The hyphen can be used generally for all kinds of wordbreaks . En Dash (–) En Dash gets its name from its length. It is one ‘N’ long (En is a typographical unit that is almost as wide as 'N'). En Dash is used to express a range of values or a distance: People of age 55–80 are more prone to hypertension. Delhi–Sidney flight was late by three hours. In MS Word, you can put an En Dash either from the menu, clicking Insert->Symbol or by the key-combinatio...

Unethical Business Practices by Associated Content (AC)

Useful Resources Freelance job at Constant Content Freelance for a 6 figure income Get paid to write on the Internet 25 Ways to write for income on the Internet Work from home as a virtual assistant Freelance for fortune 500 companies Today’s Internet slogan is ‘Content is King’ . If you have well-written, keyword rich content, without grammatical errors, then you can rank very high on search engine results, thus making a lot of money. With this business idea, several companies have sprung up, and Associated Content (who call themselves, People’s Media Company) is one among them. Here, we will try to find answers to these questions: 1. What exactly is Associated Content (if you don’t already know this)? 2. Is it really worthwhile to work with them? 3. Why should you steer right clear of them? What is Associated Content (AC) Associated Content (AC) is a website, in which you can earn money submitting content (text, video, audio, or images) . Anyone from anywhere in the...

What Is DoFollow? Guide: How to Make Blogspot Blogs Dofollow?

Dear friends, this is a blog notification post. I have decided to make my blog, DoFollow. You will find the comment policy updated on the sidebar about this (please look at the left sidebar). [Edit: The blog is no longer DoFollow due to loads of spam comments it attracted ] Backlinks are very important for your websites. They are like votes cast by one respectable website to another, and they will greatly increase the site’s traffic. When one gets many backlinks, one’s site’s ranking in search engine results will skyrocket. Search engines use programs called search bots or web crawlers to access and index web pages. That’s how you see websites in the search results of Google and Yahoo!. If your site ranks high for any search terms related to the products you promote, you can get several potential customers (a very daunting task indeed). Now, in order for you to get business, you must rank high in search engines , and the most important thing that will help you in this is link build...