#15

There are quite a few grammar rules that mess me up quite frequently. One of them being subject verb agreement. With subject verb agreement the basic rule is that singular subjects take on singular verbs and plural subjects take on plural verbs obviously but there are tricks. First you need to recognize what kind of subject is it to match it with that type of verb. Verbs don't add s to make plurals as subjects or nouns do most of the time. To chose the correct verb you should think of which verb would make sense with he or she and which verb would make sense with they. Then there are the cases where sentences have a multiple number of subjects or nouns. When the subjects are connected with or or nor one must pick the singular verb to use in this sentence. When two singular subjects are connect with either or neither they will also require the singular form of the verb. If one of the two subjects connected by either/or or neither/nor is I it should be put last and followed up by the verb am. When there is both singular and a plural subject connected by or or nor, the plural subject should go last and the plural verb should be used. When two or more subjects are connected by and it is obviously appropriate to use the plural verb. One of the tricky rules is when using words such as everybody, everyone, anybody, anyone, each, someone and somebody the singular verb is always used. In a sentence like "Each of the boys knows the offensive plays." it would be easy to mistake know for knows because the subject before the verb ,boys, is obviously plural but when saying each the singular form is always to be used. Lastly when using portions as subjects such as, percents, some, none, or a fraction always look at the noun in the prepositional phrase to see if it's singular or plural and match your verb with that noun.