“He is one of the people who consistently supports our positions.” That’s how Jim Sedlak, director of public policy for the American Life League, described John Ashcroft, President-elect George W.

Should you say a person’s whereabouts "is" unknown or "are" unknown? Dictionaries say "whereabouts" is one of those words that may be used with either a singular or a plural verb. One reference book ...

“Every one of us have a role to play” or “Every one of us has a role to play”? “A bunch of students were waiting outside” or “a bunch of students was waiting outside”? “It is I who am here” or “It is ...

I recently fielded questions about two subject-verb agreement errors that readers noticed in the media. One was heard on an NPR program. The other was committed by, um, a columnist who should have ...

Subject-verb agreement means that your verb must be conjugated, or changed, to fit (or agree) with the subject. Subjects can be singular or plural. Think of singular and plural as mathematical ...

As terse as they normally are, newspaper headlines are designed to get your attention by, as much as possible, summarizing the main body text. Two words in last week’s headline of this column; ...

However, there are many types of noun and noun phrase in English, and it can be difficult to know if a particular noun takes a singular verb (such as DOES / HAS / AM / IS ) or a plural verb (DO / HAVE ...

Why is Christian Science in our name? Our name is about honesty. The Monitor is owned by The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and we’ve always been transparent about that. The church publishes the ...

Although English-language verbs generally don’t inflect or change in form to agree with the subject in number, they do so in the present tense, third-person singular. In English grammar, in this ...