F to an A

F to an A

Have you ever received an essay back, got a big fat F on it, and the only reason you got an F was for subject-verb agreement. Do not worry because you are one of the many. If you eliminate these four mistakes that people normally make, then you are sure to get an A on that next essay. This confusion can be corrected with a few precautions.

First, you should eliminate any prepositional phases. Look at the sentence and find the prepositional phases. For example, "The keys on the dashboard are mine." Then the sentence without the prepositional phrase, "The keys are mine." When this is done, the subject and verb can be clear seen, and then you can decide if the verb needs to be plural or singular. Therefore, if you remember to cross out all the words between the subject and verb, the nasty confusion will be gone.

Another problem that can occur with subject and verb agreement is when the verb comes before the subject. What, who, which, and where are just few of the words that can come before the subject. These words may blur your judgement in what agreement to put, so there is a simple way to avoid this confusion. All you have to do is to ask the question, who or what of the verb. For example, "Where are the children’s shoes?" then you ask, "What are?" and the answer would be the shoes are.

Compound subjects have a reputation to screw up people on subject agreement, but we can fix it. Use a plural verb, generally, in a sentence connected by and. It should be second nature to use a plural verb in a compound sentence joined by and. We do this because in a compound sentence joined by and there are two subjects, therefore, that makes the verb plural. For example, "A wooden chair and an old rusty bicycle are in the garage." In this sentence, the subjects are chair and bicycle, which is going to make the verb plural. Also, use the closest subject to agree with the verb when using either…or, neither…nor, and not only…but also. Some examples can be found on page 352 of the College Writing Skills with Readings.

Last, the mistake to remember is that indefinite pronouns being used as the subject can be singular or plural. You need to learn the indefinite pronouns, which can found on page 353 of the College Writing Skills with Readings.