When Your Subject and Verb Agree to Disagree

In case you think this mistake is one only "dummies" make, look at the following, taken from an ad signed by 87 Nobel prize winners in chemistry, economics, literature, medicine, physics, and peace:

"The survival of mankind, and of the earth which sustains all of us, are in serious jeopardy..."

The subject of this sentence is "survival." That's singular, but the verb "are" is plural. This should have been written as:

The survival of mankind, and of the earth which sustains all of us, is in serious jeopardy...

or

The survival of mankind and the survival of the earth, which sustains all of us, are in serious jeopardy...

Verbs and nouns in sentence must "agree" with each other. Plural nouns and pronouns require plural verbs; singular nouns and pronouns require singular verbs. In this latter example, we have changed the subject so that it is compound and therefore requires a plural verb.

And by the way...there are two other items in this example which could have been done better. The first is the use of mankind. These days, the preferred, non-sexist term is humankind. The second is the use of which. "That" is a better choice when the clause is not set off by commas.

The verb in the following sentence (was eating) is singular. It doesn't agree with subject (We) ehivh is plural.

We was eating dinner.

"We" is plural; it refers to more than one person. "Was" is singular. To correct the sentence, the subject or the verb must be changed. The change depends on the meaning.

We were eating dinner. (If more than one person was eating)

or

I was eating dinner. (If only one person was eating.)

The problem of agreement is often compounded in longer sentences where you lose sight of the subject, as in this example:

Traveling with my family through the Rocky Mountains, in the old station wagon, with my ugly Aunt Lizzie in the back seat, fanning herself, and my stupid sisters falling asleep on my lap, are an exciting adventure.

The subject of the example sentence is traveling. Everything else is about the traveling. The verb "are" doesn't come until the end of the sentence. The writer has forgotten about the true subject and probably uses a plural verb because of the plural noun "sisters."

The sentence is rather long, so one solution is to break the sentence into three sentences and correct the verb this way:

Traveling with my family is an exciting adventure. I love to ride in the old station wagon as we drive through the Rocky Mountains. My ugly Aunt Lizzie sits in the back seat fanning herself and my ugly sisters fall asleep on mylap.

[Some of these examples and explanations were taken from William Safire's November 6th ON LANGUAGE column which appears in The New York Times Magazine.]