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Writing Skills

Brush up on your grammar and punctuation skills to polish your final drafts.

Subject-Verb Agreement

A verb must agree in number and in person with its subject. 

  • INCORRECT: My nieces and nephew is visiting this weekend.
  • CORRECT: My nieces and nephew are visiting this weekend.

Subjects Followed by Prepositional Phrases

Prepositional phrases such as with, together with, along with, as well as are not part of the subject and, therefore, have no effect on the form of the verb. The verb needs to agree in number only with the subject of the sentence.

  • INCORRECT: Jacob, along with his father, mows the lawn every day.
  • CORRECT: Jacob, along with his father, mow the lawn every day.

Compound Subjects

Compound subjects joined by and need a plural verb.

  • CORRECT:  Healthy diet and regular sleep are necessary for good mental health.

When the compound subject is joined by or, nor, neither... nor, either... or and one part of the compound subject is singular and the other part is plural, the verb needs to agree with the part closest to it.

  • INCORRECT: Neither the workers nor their boss are coming in today.
  • CORRECT: Neither the workers nor their boss is coming in today.

Subjects Following Verbs

If the subject is following the verb in the sentence, rather than preceding it, it still has to agree with it in number.

  • INCORRECT: Here's some tutorials to help with paper writing.
  • CORRECT:  Here are some tutorials to help with paper writing.

Collective Nouns

If the collective noun is taken to represent the group as one whole, then the singular form of the verb is used.

  • CORRECT: The committee was tasked to provide feedback on the proposed policy.

If individual members are implied, then the verb takes the plural form:

  • CORRECT: The committee were voting on the proposed policy.

Nouns with Plural Form

Some nouns occur only in plural form, but they are singular nouns and take a singular verb: politics, news, ethics, measles.

  • CORRECT: Ethics is an important part of any business plan.

Plural nouns of Latin origin take plural verbs (alumni, media, criteria, phenomena). The word data can take both a singular verb or a plural verb. The use of plural is more formal.

  • CORRECT: The data was provided by a third-party company.
  • CORRECT: The data for the study were collected from all ten campuses.

Time and Amount Nouns

Subjects that express time or amount also take a singular verb.

  • CORRECT: Two thousand is the average placement score.

Titles and Country Names

Titles and names of countries take the singular form of the verb.

  • CORRECT: Italy is known for its tourist destinations.