A Tough Case for Subject-verb Agreement

There are some bits of advice that I’ve been dishing out for so long that I can’t remember where I picked them up in the first place.

A particular subject-verb agreement issue is an example. I’ve been saying for so long that “a team of rivals” can take either a singular verb or plural verb that I don’t remember how I arrived at that conclusion. Did I read somewhere that the verb can agree with any noun in a noun phrase? Or did I deduce it myself through a process of elimination? (That is: Research shows there's no rule against it, therefore it’s okay.) Either way, it’s a little unnerving when I realize I can no longer remember the basis of something I’ve been saying for years.

That's why I was so happy recently to rediscover a passage from Barbara Wallraff’s “Word Court”:

"The issue of agreeement that most often comes up has to do with whether phrases like ‘the committee of one hundred’ and ‘a crowd of well-wishers’ are singular or plural. Fortunately, this is fairly easy to finesse, because such constructions may go either way, depending on meaning.

“Start by assuming that the main, singular noun (committee, crowd) is what should be agreed with. If that results in something illogical or terribly peculiar, switch to agreeing with the plural object of the preposition (one hundred, well-wishers).”

 Thanks, Barbara.

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