The Disagreement: A Story in the Town of Grammarville

Once upon a time in the town of Grammarville, in the tight-knit neigborhood of Sentence, there lived a subject and a verb who never agreed on anything. When the subject was singular, the verb was plural; when the verb was singular, the subject thought it best to be plural. As you can imagine, this caused a great deal of confusion with the other residents of Sentence. The prepositional phrases, adverbs, and dangling participles protested whenever the pair were seen together. For they were breaking a town ordinance.
"Stop this madness! Because of you two, the rest of us do not make sense!" they'd shout.

Feed up, a gang of prepositional phrases gathered other Sentence residents for an impromptu street hall meeting. A brave participle was sent to advise the subject and verb of their required presence. Even though these two had been villainized, they too wanted a resolution to the problem, and eagerly accompanied the participle back to the meeting place. For two days and two nights the attendees debated, and shouted, and cried, and pleaded. But then, at an hour before the beginning of the third day, laughter and singing were the dominating sounds.

To everyone's delight, the residents emerged from the street hall meeting having reached an agreement. They announced that the subject and verb had agreed to agree in what would come to be known as the "Great Subject-Verb Agreement." The town ordinance was amended and changed to a law; the punishment for not adhering to it was the label of being "grammatically incorrect."

Here are nine highlights from the subject-verb tenets comprising the Agreement (color coordinated for your reading pleasure):

1.Singular indefinite pronoun subjects take singular verbs.
Ex: No one wants to eat the last piece of cake.

2. Inverted subjects (when the verb comes before the subject) must agree with the verb.
Ex: There are three cars to tow.

3. A phrase or clause between a subject and verb does not change the number of the subject.
Ex: A box of stale cereal sits on the counter.

4. For compound subjects joined by or/nor, the verb agrees with the subject closer to it.
Ex: Neither the buyer nor the sellers are interested in paying the closing cost.

5. Collective nouns may be singular or plural depending on how they behave in the sentence.
Ex: The Senate has decided not to convene today. (as a collective unit)
Ex: The Senate members have decided not to meet. (as individuals)

6. Compound subjects joined by and are always require a plural verb.
Ex: A writer and his pen make an attractive couple.

7. Plural form subjects with a plural meaning require a plural verb.
Ex: The scissors are a dangerous toy.

8. Titles of single entities require a singular verb.
Ex: The Bridges of Madison County is an interesting read.

9. With a subject and subject complement of a different number, the verb must agree with the subject.
Ex: The topic for today is relationships.


(The nine rules aren't mine, of course, but my little Grammarville story is a Jennifer Singleton special creation.)