The subject and its verb must agree in number. Be sure that the verb agrees with its subject and not with the object of a preposition that comes before the verb.

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A compound subject and its verb must agree.

Compound subjects joined by the coordinating conjunction and are plural.

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If a compound subject is joined by or, the verb must agree with the last item in the subject.

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Special Rules for Agreement with Certain Kinds of Subjects

Case 1: Titles of books, movies, magazines, newspapers, stories, and songs are always considered singular, even if they end in –s.

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Case 2: A collective noun, such as group, team, collection, country, nation, kingdom, family, school, flock, bevy, pod, and herd, names more than one person or object acting as a group. These nouns are usually considered singular.

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Case 3: Most indefinite pronouns, including anyone, someone, everyone, no one, anybody, everybody, somebody, nobody, nothing, everything, something, anything, either (of), neither (of), and each (of) are considered singular.

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Case 4: Some indefinite pronouns that clearly refer to more than one, such as many, most, few, and both, are considered plural.

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Case 5: The indefinite pronouns …….

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Case 6: When the subject is separated from the verb ……

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Case 7: A compound subject consisting of two or more subjects ……

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Case 8: When joining two or more subjects by or, nor, either…or, or neither…nor, the subject closest to the verb determines whether …….

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Case 9: When the subject of the sentence is singular but represents a group of people acting as a whole, the verb is ……

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Case 10: In a sentence with an inverted word order, beginning with there or here, the subject following the verb determines ……

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Case 11: If a sentence begins with one or more prepositional phrases followed immediately by a verb, the subject following the verb controls ……

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