Subject-Verb Agreement

All of the children are happy.
Some of the milk bottles are broken.
Some of the milk is bad.


In English, verbs must "agree with" their subjects in person and number: if the subject is singular, 3rd person, then the verb must also be singular, third person. If the subject is plural, 1st person, then the verb must have the corresponding "form."

Three frequent problems get in the way of students choosing the proper verb forms:


  1. Not understanding where the real subject of the sentence is because of prepositional phrases or relative clauses which come between the subject and the verb:

    "One of the children are not feeling well."

    "The tank of water surround the fish."


    In the first sentence, the verb should be "is" because the subject is one, not children. In the second sentence, the verb should be surrounds because the subject is tank (3rd person singular).
    Can you find the error in the next sentence?


    "The nurses who attend medical school studies hard."


    The verb should be "study" because the subject is nurses not school.


  2. "Collective noun" forms like family, crew, government or herd, are usually viewed (in American English) as representing a group of people or animals acting as one unit, and therefore take a singular verb form, even though they may seem plural in concept.

    "Every family watch 6-8 hours of television a day."


    The verb should be "watches" because of the single unit of family.


  3. Words of quantity, like all or some, take different forms depending on whether the noun that follows is a count or non-count noun. Count nouns are those which can be quantified, while non-count nouns are those which are measurable but not quantifiable. Study the following examples of correct subject-verb agreement.


    "Some of the milk bottles are broken."

    "Some of the milk is sour."

    "All the harassment is temporary inconvenience."


  4. Sometimes, writers simply don't think through whether the subject is singular or plural, and therefore use the wrong form.
    Quick challenge--See if you can find the subject-verb agreement error in the following sentence:

    "The speaker find it is not easy to know what true love is for him or the instructor."


©1999 L. Holden
CLC Writing Center