Three Rules on Subject-Verb Agreement

There are, of course, many other kinds of mistakes made with subjects and verbs. Classifying the types often helps reduce the mistakes you might make.

But first, a review of the basics.

Let’s start with three basic and immutable rules:

1. If the grammatical subject of a sentence is singular, it takes a singular verb. 2. If the grammatical subject is plural, it takes a plural verb. 3. The grammatical subject, not some other word, always determines the number of the verb.

 

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