I once quoted Ward Farnsworth’s point in “Farnsworth’s Classical English Style” that complex sentences require “the reader to keep in mind what is being said until the point arrives” and snarked that many writers share that deficiency in short-term memory.
We see evidence every day in print and online that any sentence longer than half a dozen words will contain some careless oversight, often the failure of the verb to agree with the subject.
Many times when a subject and verb are separated by prepositional phrases or other constructions containing nouns or pronouns, the writer arriving at the verb, distracted by the clutter, will mistakenly seize on something close to make it the subject.
Here are a couple of examples from years past in Philip B. Corbett’s After Deadline, an in-house critique at The New York Times:
“But everything, from the pithy recurring phrases to the thoughtfully placed pauses and seemingly folksy anecdotes, are actually well-planned-out, crowd-tested presentations.”
The writer, distracted by “phrases,” “pauses,” and “anecdotes,” which are the objects of “from” or “to,” forgets that the subject of the verb is “everything.” (Yes, “everything is presentations” is going to look a little jarring, which is one other reason to recast the sentence.)
“The stridency of Mr. Trump and Mr. Cruz hold little appeal to many of these Republicans.”
“Mr. Trump” and “Mr. Cruz” may look like a conjoined subject, but that “of” makes the noun phrase the object of a preposition. “Stridency” is the subject, and the verb should be “holds.”
During the years I taught editing at Loyola University Maryland, I would present sentences like these to the class and ask, “What is the subject of this sentence?” And I would get a grab bag of answers, any noun or pronoun picked at random.
I realize, too late, that I should have asked, “What noun or pronoun or gerund is interacting with this verb? Be sure to look all the way back to the beginning.” Then we would have to determine whether there is a preposition or participle making a noun or pronoun an object rather than a subject, on our way to the discovery of the actual subject.
There is, though, an occasion where the object of a preposition may influence whether the verb turns singular or plural: if the subject is a collective noun.
Group can be construed as singular or plural. “The group follows a set of agreed-on guidelines during discussion” indicates the individuals acting as a unit. But add a prepositional phrase with a plural object, and the sense shifts toward plurality: “The group of students pursue individual tasks during the class period.”
In writing, as in driving and cooking, it helps to pay attention to what you are doing.
John E. McIntyre has been an editor at The Baltimore Sun for more than 30 years and taught at Loyola University Maryland for 25. He is the author of two short but trenchant books, “The Old Editor Says: Maxims for Writing and Editing” and “Bad Advice: The Most Unreliable Counsel Available on Grammar, Usage, and Writing”.
Editing is our specialty. See more at MHarris.com.