Subject-verb agreement is one of the most important grammatical rules that every writer, editor, and copywriter should understand. Making mistakes in this area can significantly diminish the quality of your writing, confuse your readers, and even hurt your website`s search engine rankings. That`s why it`s essential to know how to enumerate subject-verb agreement correctly.
Subject-verb agreement refers to the agreement between the subject and the verb in a sentence. It means that the verb must agree in number with the subject it refers to. In other words, if the subject is singular, the verb must be singular too, and if the subject is plural, the verb must be plural as well.
Here are some tips on how to ensure proper subject-verb agreement:
1. Identify the subject: Before you can determine the proper verb form, you need to determine the subject of the sentence. The subject is the noun or pronoun that the sentence is about.
2. Determine the number of the subject: Is the subject singular or plural? If it`s singular, the verb must be singular too. If it`s plural, the verb must be plural as well.
3. Be careful with compound subjects: When you have a compound subject, that is, two or more subjects connected by “and,” the verb must be plural. For example, “John and Mary are going to the beach.” However, if the subjects are joined by “or” or “nor,” the verb should agree with the subject closest to the verb. For example, “Neither John nor Mary is going to the beach.”
4. Watch out for nouns that end in -s: Some nouns may look plural, but they are actually singular, such as “news,” “mathematics,” “politics,” and “economics.” The verb in these cases should be singular. For example, “The news is reporting a new breakthrough.”
5. Don`t be fooled by prepositional phrases: Prepositional phrases that come between the subject and the verb do not affect subject-verb agreement. For example, “The book on the table is mine.” “book” is singular, so the verb “is” must also be singular.
Subject-verb agreement is a fundamental rule of grammar that every writer, editor, and copywriter should master. By following these tips, you can ensure that your writing is clear, concise, and grammatically correct. This, in turn, will help you to create content that engages and informs your readers, while also boosting your website`s search engine rankings.
