English Grammar Practice - Agreement (Singular and Plural)

Directions: In each of the following sentences, a verb is needed. Using clues from the sentence, decide whether the verb should be singular or plural. Then select the correct verb from the choices given.

1. Four hundred pages (seems, seem) like an awfully long reading assignment for the holiday weekend.

2. Neither of the injured dancers (is, are) feeling well enough to perform this evening.

3. The orchestra (has, have) recently completed a successful tour of several Asian countries.

4. All of the stone masons working on the cathedral (is, are) residents of Harlem.

5. Everyone in the class (was, were) surprised at how easy the final exam was.

Answers (Highlight the text below to see and verify your answers)

1. The subject here is 'Four hundred pages', looks like a plural, but remember a subject that describes an amount is singular. Therefore a singular verb "SEEMS" in this case would be correct.

2. The subject here is ‘Neither’ an indefinite pronoun, which is singular and hence the sentence needs a singular verb "IS".

3. In this sentence the subject is the collective noun 'Orchestra'. The subject is singular in form but refers to a large group of people. In the sentence orchestra is referred as a whole doing a single action. Hence the singular verb "HAS" is needed.

4. The subject of the sentence is the indefinite pronoun 'All'. Remember 'All' is one of the SANAM Pronouns (*some, *any, *none, *all, *most). To tell if the SANAM pronoun is singular or plural you need to look at the prepositional phrase; the object of the prepositional phrase will indicate the case. In the sentence the prepositional phrase is "of the stone masons", here the object of the preposition is "masons" which is plural. Hence we need a plural verb "ARE".

5. Here the indefinite pronoun 'Everyone' is used as the subject of the sentence. All indefinite pronouns ending with -body/-one are singular. So, we need a singular verb in this sentence "WAS".