HiSET · Language Arts Writing · 6 min read
Subject Agreement and Verb Forms
- Identify and apply correct subject-verb agreement across standard, compound, and inverted sentence structures.
- Select appropriate verb tenses to maintain consistency and convey precise timing across past, present, and perfect forms.
- Form irregular verbs accurately and distinguish between transitive and intransitive verb pairs.
Core Principles of Subject-Verb Agreement
In the simple present tense, subjects and verbs must agree in grammatical number. Third-person singular subjects generally take verbs ending in -s or -es, while the verbs 'be' and 'have' follow irregular forms. In contrast, plural subjects in the simple present generally take the base form of the verb, or 'are' when paired with the verb 'be.'
Compound subjects introduce specific agreement requirements depending on the conjunction used to link them. Compound subjects joined by the coordinating conjunction 'and' usually require a plural verb. However, compound subjects joined by 'and' that refer to a single entity or person take a singular verb instead. When subjects are joined by 'or' or 'nor,' the verb must agree in number with the closer subject. This same principle governs correlative constructions like 'either... or' and 'neither... nor,' in which the verb agrees with the nearer subject.
A common challenge in editing is separating the true subject from intervening descriptive phrases. A prepositional phrase placed between a subject and its verb does not change the grammatical number of the subject. In the construction 'one of the [plural noun],' the true subject is 'one,' which requires a singular verb. Furthermore, expressions such as 'as well as,' 'in addition to,' 'together with,' and 'along with' do not change the number of the subject. Nonessential clauses enclosed by commas between the subject and the verb do not alter subject-verb agreement, and appositive phrases placed between a subject and its verb do not determine the agreement form of the verb.
Common mistakes
- Allowing intervening prepositional phrases, appositives, or phrases like 'as well as' and 'along with' to alter the agreement of the true subject.
- Treating singular indefinite pronouns such as 'each,' 'everyone,' and 'nobody' as plural, or misidentifying variable pronouns like 'all' and 'some.'
- Placing 'would have' inside a past hypothetical 'if' clause instead of correctly using the past perfect tense.
- Confusing 'lie' with 'lay,' 'rise' with 'raise,' or the common intransitive use of 'sit' with the transitive use of 'set.'
Key points
- In the simple present, third-person singular subjects generally take verbs ending in -s or -es, while plural subjects generally take the base form; forms of 'be' and modal auxiliaries require separate treatment.
- Compound subjects joined by 'and' usually take plural verbs unless referring to a single entity, while subjects joined by 'or,' 'nor,' 'either... or,' or 'neither... nor' agree with the nearer subject.
- Intervening words, prepositional phrases, appositives, and expressions like 'together with' or 'in addition to' do not alter the grammatical number of the subject.
- Indefinite pronouns like 'each' and 'someone' are singular, 'many' and 'few' are plural, and 'all' or 'some' depend on their reference; collective nouns and measurement totals take singular verbs when functioning as unified wholes.
- In inverted sentences and clauses starting with 'there is' or 'there are,' the verb agrees with the noun phrase that follows it.
- Maintain consistent verb tenses, applying the present perfect ('has'/'have' plus past participle) for actions continuing to the present, and the past perfect ('had' plus past participle) for events prior to another past event.
- Master irregular principal forms, use base verbs after 'did,' require auxiliaries with past participles, and avoid 'would have' in conditional 'if' clauses.
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