Grammer a Week 12: Subject-Verb Agreement · 3:49am May 2nd, 2015
This is Grammer a Week, the periodic blog program-thing where I address a frequently broken grammar rule and tell you how to fix it. This week's installment is about subject-verb agreement. You might find it strange that I'm doing a blog post on something as simple as this. But believe me when I say that even a topic as basic as subjects agreeing with their verbs are easier to get wrong than you might suspect. And yes, for you sharp-eyed readers out there, that previous sentence contained such an error.
Let's start with the basics. Hopefully, you already understand that a sentence like this . . .
Fluttershy go to the spa.
. . . is incorrect. "Go" is the conjugated form of the verb "to go," but it's the plural conjugation of the verb. "Fluttershy" is a singular subject. Therefore, this is a case of subject-verb disagreement; the subject is singular, but the verb is plural.
Of course, it's much easier to look at the sentence and reason that is just "sounds" wrong. The problem is, this instinctive spell-checker in your brain only seems to work when the subject and verb in question are very close to each other. Take this example:
Fluttershy, along with all her friends, go to the spa.
Does that sound alright? It might, but that's doesn't mean this sentence is correct. All I did was add in an extra thought in between the subject and the verb; it doesn't change the fact that the subject of this sentence is still "Fluttershy," and the verb does not agree with her. It doesn't matter if what I write between the subject and verb of the sentence happens to have a plural noun; the subject and verb proper of the sentence still must agree. The sentence is properly written as such:
Fluttershy, along with all her friends, goes to the spa.
Here's something else for you to ponder:
Fluttershy, the yellow pegasus, and Rarity, the beautiful young unicorn, goes to the spa.
Is this sentence conjugated correctly? No, it's not. The difference between this sentence and the previous example is that the subject has actually changed. In the previous sentence, the subject was just "Fluttershy." In this sentence, it's actually "Fluttershy and Rarity": a compound subject, but a plural one. If you take out the appositive phrases ("the yellow pegasus" and "the beautiful young unicorn") *, you're left with:
Fluttershy and Rarity goes to the spa.
The error should be a bit more apparent now. That plural subject necessitates a plural noun.
Let's recant the sentence that I wrote for the introduction for this post:
But believe me when I say that even a topic as basic as subjects agreeing with their verbs are easier to get wrong than you might suspect.
Cut through the noise of the sentence and identify the subject. Then identify the verb that conjugates with it. When you do that, you get a sentence like this:
But believe me when I say that even a topic are easier to get wrong than you might suspect.
Got the problem?
* If you're curious, an appositive phrase is just one that renames a subject. In almost all cases, it's not needed for the meaning of the sentence to remain intact (i.e. it's nonrestrictive).
Thanks for reading! If you have any questions or comments, please post them below. I'm always open to suggestions for future Grammer a Week posts.
Your quote tags went a bit strange in the second half of this, but it was clear enough that it didn't make it hard to read. As you say, it's a little surprising how often you see this mistake, even in otherwise good stories.
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Oops! I published this post around midnight (my time zone), so I didn't have time to proofread it.
Fixed!