21st Century Grammar Handbook (4 page)

Advise.
See
advice.

Affect, effect.
Commonly confused, these two words have different meanings despite their somewhat similar sound
(mar-homonyms).
“Affect” is both a
noun
and a
verb.
As a verb it means to influence how a thing happens or is experienced; as a noun it has to do with emotions and attitudes and is used principally in psychological texts. “Effect” is also both a noun and a verb: the noun means the result or outcome of some action, while the verb means to make something happen. Just as the noun “affect” is little used in ordinary speech or writing, so “effect” as a verb is not very common. In most cases, the right choice for a verb is “affect,” and the right choice for a noun is “effect”: “Poverty has a bad effect on people; it affects them adversely.” “The prisoners effected their escape, revealing little affect in the process.”

African American English.
See
black English.

Afro-American English.
See
black English.

After.
Preposition
governing the
objective case:
“The dog ran after her.”
Adverb
of time: “That happened after.”

Against.
Preposition
governing the
objective case:
“The politician worked against us.”

Agent.
The
subject
of a sentence is often the agent of some action, the person or thing that does something.

Agreement.
Perhaps the most common and most glaring grammatical errors come with matching the various elements of sentences—
subject
with
verb,
and
pronoun
with
antecedent.

While the
rules
for properly pairing verb and noun and referent and pronoun are fairly simple, a number of common writing problems (usually inattention or carelessness) too often fracture these important links in
sentences.
The rules of agreement should be treated consistently by all writers because they spell out how readers and listeners should make the connections we want them to between key concepts. If the rules are broken, so are the logical bonds of our ideas, and our
audience
is left adrift to wonder what we mean.

To understand agreement, recall that
nouns
and pronouns can vary in
number
and
person.

Number simply means that there may be one or more things or people who perform an action in a sentence—who are its subject. If a noun is the subject, it can be singular—one actor or agent—or plural—more than one agent. Verbs usually change their forms for singular or plural subjects: “One elephant trumpets, but two elephants trumpet.” Normally, singular verbs with noun subjects add “
S
” or “es” to their simple or normal forms to show that the subject is singular. English retains this form of marking the number of verbs in order to ensure that subjects and verbs clearly indicate agreement.

Person and
gender
are properties of pronouns, which can be used to stand in the place of nouns in
sentences.
Pronouns can indicate not only number but gender (“he,” “she”) and whether the subject (person) is the same being as others in the sentence: “I,” “you,” “we,” “they,” “e,” “he,” “it.” English does not indicate gender distinctions in verb forms
(conjugation),
but it does retain some verb forms that match only with certain persons of
subject pronouns: “I am,” “we are,” “it is.” More important, it has a rich array of pronoun forms that must match the person and number of the words the pronouns replace or refer to (their antecedents).

The process of taking into account the number and person of a sentence’s subject and fitting those to the correct verb form is called agreement. Why is it sometimes difficult?

Sentences come in many shapes and sizes. Sometimes subjects are rather far from the verbs with which they must agree. Some nouns and pronouns can have different or varying numbers or persons. The number of such words is small, but some of them are tricky to work with. All these factors and others can complicate the process of making verb and subject agree. Let’s look at some specific examples of problems.

REMOTE SUBJECT
. It is easy to fall into the trap of making a
verb
agree with the closest
noun
even though that word is not the
subject
of the
sentence.
WRONG: “The book containing lists of names and addresses often include errors.” RIGHT: “The book … includes errors.” WRONG: “Many people standing in the line around the theater is impatient.” RIGHT: “Many people … are impatient.” Only careful rereading and revising will catch and correct these errors. Note that many nouns that end in
“S”
are
plural,
but not all. “People” is a plural word. There are also many singular words that end in “s”: “electronics,” “physics,” “mattress,” and so on. And
remember that some verbs do not form
third-person
singulars with “s”: “the man has” “the woman is.”

TITLES OR WORDS AS SUBJECT.
Titles
of works or words treated as things in themselves agree with singular
verbs
even if they contain
plurals
or compound
subjects: “War and Peace
is a novel in which war and peace are the subjects discussed.” “‘Words’ is the plural of word.”

INVERTED SUBJECTS
. One way to enliven
sentences
is to change the expected
order of words
by putting the
verb
first—to invert the sentence. When you flip verb and
subject,
be sure that the verb agrees with the following
noun or pronoun
subject rather than any preceding nouns or pronouns: “Near the cat stand five pigeons.” A form of
inversion
is to begin sentences with a general word like “there” and
“is” or “are.”
It is tempting and a common mistake to begin all such sentences with the singular verb, although the following subject is often plural. WRONG: “There is five pigeons near the cat.” RIGHT: “There are five pigeons near the cat.”

SUBJECTS LINKED BY “AND
.” In most cases,
subjects
that consist of two or more
nouns or pronouns
linked by
“and”
are
plural.
However, in some cases the pairing of words with “and” indicates a unity so tight that the words are meant to be a single thing and thus agree with a singular form of the verb: “Bacon and eggs is a traditional breakfast.” “The bacon and the eggs are on the plate.”

SUBJECTS LINKED BY “OR,” “EITHER,” “NEITHER,” AND “NOR.”
Subjects
tied together by the
conjunctions “or,”
“nor,” “either,” and
“neither”
are not of equal weight. The
verbs
that follow such compound subjects agree with the second
noun
or
pronoun
of the linked pair: “Either my roommates or I am going to flunk out.” “Neither the cows nor the horse stays out in the rain.” Generally, the
plural
of the pair should be the second subject linked and followed by a plural verb to avoid leading an
audience
to think plural first and then have to shift into singular later. A singular subject linked to a plural and followed by a plural verb somehow sounds more natural to an audience used to finding more than one subject, however linked, followed by a plural verb.

SUBJECTS THAT CAN BE EITHER PLURAL OR SINGULAR.
Some
collective nouns
that stand for groups of things or people can be treated as either singular or
plural
subjects. American English normally takes these words to be singular and matches them to singular
verbs
unless special
emphasis
is being placed on the activity of the individuals in the collective, in which case they can be joined to a plural verb. It is probably better to rewrite such plural use of collectives rather than make your
audience
wonder what you mean. But if a collective in the plural sense seems the best way to convey your idea, such agreements are possible: “The team plays well on weekends.” “Today the team are going to their homes for a rest.” The second
sentence
is grammatically defensible, but it seems a bit forced in modern American English.
(British English
usually treats such
collectives as plural, making a correct American plural construction sometimes seem like an affectation of British “refinement.”)

INDEFINITE PRONOUN SUBJECT
. Some
indefinite
pronouns
(“another,” “anybody,” “anyone,” “each,”
“either,” “everyone,” “everything,”
“much” “neither,” “nobody,”
“no one,”
“nothing,” “one,”
“other,” “somebody,” “someone,” and “something”) agree with singular
verbs,
while others are treated as
plurals
(“both,” “few,”
“many,”
“others,”
“several”),
and some can be used in both ways (“all,” “any,” “enough,”
“more,”
“most,”
“none,”
and
“some”):
“All of the paint spills, and all of the children mop it up.” Note that the singular indefinites may be followed by
prepositional phrases
with plural
objects
but still take singular verb forms: “Each of the cats is white.”

RELATIVE PRONOUN AS SUBJECT
. In dependent
clauses, relative pronouns
can refer to either
singular
or
plural
things or people
(antecedents).
The
verb
in the clause agrees with the antecedent: “The car with the four doors that is near me has trouble starting.” “Picasso is one of the artists who have an inflated reputation.” “Picasso is the one among all those artists who has the most exaggerated reputation.”

PREDICATE NOUN VERSUS SUBJECT
. Sentences with
linking verbs
should have the
verb
agree with the
subject
and not with the following
predicate noun
(word or words after the
linking verb), even if the subject is not the same
number
as the predicate noun: “Artists’ reputations are a subject of controversy.”

Pronouns
replace or refer to other words, which usually come before them in
sentences (antecedents).
In more complex sentences it takes care to distinguish which words the pronoun relates to and to match them in
number
and
person.
For example, in the previous sentence “them” refers to “words” and, therefore, is third-person plural. If the sentence had said “which word the pronoun relates to,” then the proper pronoun would be singular third-person: “it.”

Problems in making the proper links between pronoun and antecedent commonly arise in distinguishing plurals from singulars, collectives, and
indefinites.
There is also the issue of
gender
to examine.

The use of
“he”
as a generic pronoun that represents both men and women has come to be viewed as restrictive of women and prejudicial. For instance, a sentence that reads “A doctor should keep his instruments clean” ignores and excludes women who are doctors. This sentence can easily be changed by using a more accurate construction: “A doctor should keep his or her instruments clean.” Remember to consider your
audience
and always choose appropriate pronouns. This subject is discussed more fully in the entry on
sexist language,
where ways to avoid prejudicial or offensive constructions are also examined.

When antecedents consist of more than one word linked
by
“and,”
we have a tendency to assume that the words referred to are
plural
and to follow them with plural pronouns. Sometimes this assumption betrays us: “Dogs and cats have their special traits.” “Each dog and cat has its special traits.” In the first instance “and” does link a plural antecedent; but in the second sentence, “and” is less important than “each,” which is an indefinite pronoun that is singular. The subject in the second sentence means “each dog and each cat taken by itself as a single thing.” That is why “each” agrees with a singular
verb
and takes precedence over the seemingly plural antecedent linked by “and.”

Similar problems occur with indefinites or collectives as antecedents since these words can vary in number. All of the following sentences are correct: “All of the people had their favorites.” “All of the paint poured out of its can.” “The orchestra was proud of its performance.” “The orchestra shifted in their chairs.”

Antecedents linked by
“or,”
“nor,”
“neither,”
“either,” and the like also require care in determining person and number. Remember that it is the second element in pairs linked by these
conjunctions
that governs agreement: if a singular word is joined to a plural word by “or,” for instance, the plural word dictates that the following pronoun must be plural: “The boy or the men will call their elephant.” Avoid writing sentences that link a plural antecedent and a following singular one with “or” because such sentences often sound awkward: “The women or the girl will call her elephant.” Rewrite such sentences to make clear who is doing what: “The women will call their elephant, or the girl will call hers.”

Appositives—nouns
or pronouns that add information to other nouns or pronouns—also must agree in person, number, and
case:
“The president awarded the medal to Smith, teacher of the year.” See the entry on appositives for more examples and details.

Ain’t.
“Ain’t” should appear only in informal speech, correspondence, or humorous writing. No
standard English
statement should include it.