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Okay, so I’m not going to cover Quantum Physics today, but subject and verb agreement is, I do believe, closely related.

Recently we’ve dicussed interrupting words,  why a sentence has to have subject and verb agreement, and compound subjects.

This week we’re going to talk about some special conditions that may arise. 

Remember those indefinite pronouns like, “anybody, anyone, everybody, few, both, all, any, most, etc.?  They have special rules to.

*A verb must agree in number with an indefinite pronoun that’s used as a subject.

If the indefinite pronoun is singular, the verb is singular.  If the indefinite pronoun is plural, the verb is plural.

Examples:
One of my cups is chipped. (We’re only speaking of one cup)
Many of my cups are chipped. (We’re speaking of more than one cup)
Some of the paint is in the car.
Some of the cans are in the car.

Sometimes we write things in an inverted order.  If the verb comes before the subject of a sentence, it’s considered an inverted sentence and the verb still has to agree with the subject in number.

To find the subject in an inverted sentence, you just turn it around to its natural order.

Examples:
In the hall closet were two unfinished paintings. (Two unfinished paintings were in the hall closet.)
Have the winners been announced? (The winners have been announced.)

When a sentence begins with here or there, we may have to drop those words to form a natural sentence.

Examples:
Here are the court files. (The court files are here.)
There are 206 bones in the human body. (206 bones are in the human body. – notice we dropped there.)

Forming good sentence structure isn’t rocket science or quantum physics, but if you’re rusty on the rules it can sure seem like it.  One general rule of thumb is, if the sentence sounds correct when spoken aloud, it’s probably written correctly.  It doesn’t always work that way, but in most cases it will.