Month: November 2015

Are you guilty of any of these? Twenty misused words that make smart people look dumb. 

Some guidelines to help your subjects and verbs agree:

1. When the subject of a sentence is composed of two or more nouns or pronouns connected by and, use a plural verb.

She and her friends are at the execution.

2. When two or more singular nouns or pronouns are connected by “or” or “nor”, use a singular verb.

The book or the pen is in the drawer.

Neither the book nor the pen is in the drawer.

3. When a compound subject contains both a singular and a plural noun or pronoun joined by “or” or “nor”, the verb should agree with the part of the subject that is nearer the verb.

The boy or his friends run every day.

His friends or the boy runs every day.

A conjunction is a word that joins two independent clauses, or sentences, together.

Example 1: Ellen wanted to take drive into the city, but the cost of gasoline was too high.

Example 2: Richard planned to study abroad in Japan, so he decided to learn the language.

In the examples above, both but and so are conjunctions. They join two complete sentences with the help of a comma. And, but, for, or, nor, so, and yet can all act as conjunctions.

 

Word count (opens in a new tab)