Like Peas in a Pod

Romeo and Juliet

Spaghetti and meatballs

Peanut butter and jelly

The birds and the bees

Some things just seem to go together well. We carry this concept over into grammar by

matching all sentence parts. This matching of sentence elements is called agreement. It helps

you create smooth and logical sentences.

The basic rule of sentence agreement is simple: A subject must agree with its verb in number.

Number means singular or plural.

_ A singular subject names one person, place, thing, or idea.

_ A plural subject names more than one person, place, thing, or idea.

Here are some examples:

	Singular	Plural
	Subjects	Subjects
Person:	I	they
Place:	beach	beaches
Thing:	desk	desks
Idea:	freedom	freedoms

1.Singular and plural nouns

In English, the plurals of most nouns are formed by adding -s or -es to the singular form.

For example: bike → bikes; race → races; inch → inches. Some nouns have irregular plurals,

such as mouse → mice; woman → women, goose → geese. You can find the plural

forms of irregular nouns in a dictionary.

2. Singular and plural pronouns

Pronouns have singular and plural forms, too. Study the following chart.

Singular : I , she, he, it 

Plural :  we, they

Singular or Plural : you

3. Singular and plural verbs

As with nouns and pronouns, verbs show singular and plural forms. There are two areas

in which you may have difficulty identifying singular and plural forms of nouns: the basic

present tense and tenses using the helping verb to be.

As you study the following chart, notice that the form of the verb changes only in the

third-person singular column, the middle column. Find the -s or -es added to the verb.

That’s the tricky part:

_ Singular verbs end in -s or -es.

_ Plural nouns end in -s or -es.

Here are some examples:

First and second person	Singular Third Person	Plural First, Second, Third Person
(I, you) begin	(he, she, it) begins	(we,you, they) begin
(I, you)do	(he, she, it) does	(we,you, they) do

As you can see from this chart, subject-verb agreement is most difficult to determine in the

present tense.

4. Singular and plural forms of be

The form of the helping verb be may also help you determine whether a verb is singular or

plural. The following chart shows the forms of be that are different from singular to plural.