'Here's' or 'here are'?

Like “there’s,” the contraction “here’s” gets used a lot in front of plurals, especially when some modifier like “a few other” or “some” comes before the noun.

Here’s some things you should know.

Here’s all the ways you can look at this problem.

I don’t remember who taught me so or when, but somewhere I picked up the clear message that, when the stuff that follows is plural, you should use “here are” instead of “here is” or its contracted form “here’s.” As in:

Here are some things you should know.

Here are all the ways you can look at this problem.

These structures put the subject after the verb. “Here are my cousins” is an inverted way of saying “My cousins are here.” But either way, the true subject of the verb is “cousins.” And because “cousins” is plural, logic dictates that it should take a plural verb like “are” instead of a singular verb like “is.”

Actually, there’s no prohibition against using “here’s” before a plural. As with “there’s,” you could make the case that putting “here’s” before a plural is standard in common speech —idiomatic. So I’m not critical of people who make that choice unless they happen to be members of the media writing for publication. News organizations strive to avoid sloppy, informal, ungrammatical forms. So if you want to do the same, avoid “here’s” before a plural.

Tags: , ,

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 1st, 2022 at 3:14 pm and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.