Either Love It or Hate It

Subject-verb agreement – a topic of English grammar that I know causes many a person to have a nervous twitch.

I suspect that some may not even be familiar with the term; or have banished it from memory after leaving Primary school for decades. It’s the cause of many “grammatical errors”. 

In this blog, I’ll cover a few that pertain to the Grammar MCQ and Synthesis and Transformation components of paper 2 of the English exam.

Subjects and Verbs

A basic sentence must have a subject and a verb.

The verb of a sentence, meaning what the subject is or is doing, should fit grammatically with its subject, meaning what a sentence is about. We call this subject-verb agreement.

Consider this sentence: John ate.

Yes, it’s a sentence. Who is it about? It’s about John. What did he do? He ate. Who ate? John did.

Imagine a sentence without either a subject or verb. It just wouldn’t communicate anything.

Consider this sentence: John eat.

Sounds weird, doesn’t it? Well, that’s because its subject and verb do not agree.

The Proximity Rule

Subject-verb agreement errors occur frequently in the Synthesis and Transformation question type “either… or…” and “neither… nor…”

• Let’s first look at two simple cases – when both subjects in a sentence are either singular or plural.

Either Tom or John is here.

Neither Tom nor John is here.

Either the boys or the girls are here.

Neither the boys nor the girls are here.

Those should be straightforward enough.

• The confusion happens when there are both singular and plural subjects in a sentence.

For example,

Either Tom or the girls ____ here.

Neither the girls nor Tom ____ here.

In this case we apply the proximity rule, which is simply: The verb will agree with the closest subject.

Hence,

Either Tom or the girls are here.

Neither the girls nor Tom is here.

• The proximity rule also applies in these cases:

All of the boys are here.

Some of the boys are here.

Most of the boys are here.

One or the Other

The following always take a singular verb:

Either of the boys is here.

Neither of the boys is here.

This is because it is one option between two choices.

None of the Above

In the case of “none of”, both of the following are acceptable.

None of you are available.

None of you is available.

Traditionally, grammarians would insist on the latter. Some would also argue that it depends on the focus. For example, the former would mean that the whole group being addressed is unavailable, while the later would mean that each individual in the group is unavailable.

There are valid arguments on both sides which would perhaps be addressed in more depth in another blog. However, for the purpose of exams, stick to ‘None of you is available‘.

 Cheat Sheet

Now, that’s a lot of scenarios to consider. I simply tell my students the following:

“Either of / Neither of / None of” will take a singular verb. Use the proximity rule for all other cases.

 I hope that all of you have found this helpful! If the concepts of either subject-verb agreement or the proximity rule needs more clarification, feel free to post your questions in the comments section below.

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