Subject-Verb Agreement
Resource Summary: This page discusses subject-verb agreement and presents ideas for correcting subject-verb disagreement.
Last Updated: 05/17/11
Overview
Subjects and verbs must agree in number. Subject-verb disagreement can be easy to spot:
Example: Basketball are my favorite sport.
Basketball, singular, is mismatched with the plural form of a verb (are).
Correction: Basketball is my favorite sport.
Multiple Subjects
Subject-verb agreement can get tricky when you have more than one subject.Incorrect: The percentage of students who called in sick and the number of students who were marked as truant is proportional to the students' degree of seniority.
The subject here consists of two parts (percentage and number), so the subject is plural. The singular form of the verb (is) does not agree.
Correct: The percentage of students who called in sick and the number of students who were marked as truant are proportional to the students' degree of seniority.