CHAPTER

THE PROBLEM

No one, we imagine, likes disagreements:  they arise from misunderstanding and result in confusion.  Most of us would rather be in agreement with each other.  It’s this very principle that’s at the bottom of grammatical agreement.  Errors in agreement are, though, unfortunately common.  Here’s an example –a your sentence that you find correct, but your instructor doesn’t:

• Everyone ought to bring their own sugar tongs on the hike.

Your instructor has circled the “their,” as above, and written “AGR” or “agreement error” nearby.  But what’s wrong?  You run through the sentence several times aloud, and it sounds right.  Why isn’t it?

What about these sentences?

• “It’s not enough for an Uber driver just to be on time,” explained Sergei. “They also shouldn’t take 20 minutes trying to get out of a busy roundabout!”
• The Activities Committee has announced their latest plans to build a waterslide in the common room.
• Either Fr. O’Shaughnessy or Sr. Maria Juliana forgot their water pistol.
• Thea or Melvin know where the windup spider is.
• The mayor in addition to the members of the town council vote today on the proposal to erect a monument commemorating the invention on of window cleaner.
• Remember to place each lid by it’s jar: We need to have exactly enough for when we start to pickle the peaches!

Part of the problem arises from the fact that we’re used to saying, “Everyone ought to bring their own sugar tongs on the hike”  or “The mayor in addition to the members of the town council vote today on the proposal to erect a monument commemorating the invention on of window cleaner.  Ah – but remember that the way you write isn’t always the way you speak and that even though using “their” in these sentences may seem correct, it’s actually more illogical, at least in grammatical terms.

But what does that mean?

WHAT AGREEMENT IS AND HOW IT WORKS

In grammar, agreement means simply that the forms of nouns, verbs, and pronouns in a sentence all have to match or “agree with” each other.  Most of the time you probably have little trouble matching up nouns, verbs, and pronouns:

• I [first-person singular] prefer [first-person singular] to travel by zeppelin.
• We [first-person plural] prefer [first person plural] to travel by zeppelin.
• She [third person singular masculine] prefers [third person singular masculine] to travel by zeppelin.

As you’ll see in a moment, there are instances in which the “matching” is a little more difficult.  Nouns, verbs, and pronouns have to agree with each other in number, person, and gender.

Number means singular or plural:  singular goes with singular, and plural with plural.

• I [first-person singular] chose [first-person singular] the pogo-stick; they [third-person plural] chose [third person plural] the trampoline.

The job of matching nouns and verbs generally pretty easy in English, given that the singular and plural forms of almost all our verbs is identical – with, however some important exceptions. as you will see in a moment.

Person means who’s being addressed:

PERSON	NUMBER
	singular	plural
first	I	we
second	you	you
third	he, she, it	they

 

Note that English, unlike other languages,  rarely uses its second person singular pronoun “thou”; instead, we rely on “you” for both singular and plural, context usually indicating whether you mean one or more than one person.  While “you all” is a useful expression to make this distinction between one and more than one, it hasn’t been accepted into standard usage – yet.

For most verbs in English, the singular and plural forms are identical.  However, it’s very important to notice that verbs in the present tense and the present perfect tense in the third person singular (he, she, it) always ends in “-s.”  This is true for every verb in English.

• he, she, it photocopies, leaps, is
• he, she, it has photocopied, has leaped, has been

Finally, gender means masculine, feminine, or neuter.  In English [again, unlike other languages] you have a system of “natural gender.”  In other words, people and animals are the only things that you usually think of as having a sex.  “Woman” is feminine and so you use the pronouns “she, her, hers”; “man” is masculine, and so you use “he, his, him.” and “book” is neuter, so you use “it” and “its.”  Male persons and animals are masculine, female are feminine, otherwise (unless you’re speaking figuratively), everything in English is grammatically neuter.

As mentioned just above, most people have little trouble making the nouns, verbs, and pronouns in their sentences agree.  There are areas, however, in which agreement is a problem, and these areas are more common than you might realize.

Indefinite Pronouns

The following list of indefinite pronouns – pronouns that refer to unspecified nouns or pronouns – is likely to prove troublesome.

anybody                      nobody

anyone                        none

each / every                 no one

everybody                   somebody

everyone                     someone

Although you probably didn’t realize it, all of these pronouns are singular, which means that their verbs and pronouns must be singular, too.

• Somebody forgot to pick up his or her
• Everyone know that he or she needs to put feathers in the chicken soup for flavor.
• None of the assistants is so forgetful as to misplace an entire jar of newt eyes.

Think of the forms of these words – “everyone,” for example.  Ask yourself:  How many is “one”?  Then how many is “everyone”?  The same is true for all the words ending in “body”:  How many “bodies”?  One body.  Even the word “none” has “one” in it.  In these instances, you use singular forms to refer to singular antecedents (an antecedent is a word that “comes before” a verb or pronoun in a sentence and with which they must agree).  The indefinite pronouns are always third-person singular, and so you must use third-person singular pronouns to refer to them.

The problem in English is that we have no one singular pronoun to refer to both males and females [in the plural it’s no problem:  we have “they, their, them” for all three genders]; in most cases, it’s probably wise to use he or she, his or her, him or her, as we have.  (However, as you’ll see in a moment, we offer some other options as well.)

Agreement isn’t just for indefinite pronouns, either: verbs and pronouns that accompany any singular noun must be singular, too.

• A band leader ought to have his or her [not “their”!] tuba players’ best interests at heart.
• This is the true test of a good band leader: he or she has [not “they have”!] the tuba players’ best interests at heart.

Collective Nouns, Correlative Conjunctions, “Real” Subjects

A collective noun indicates a group, for example, carpool, committee, swarm.  In American usage you treat collective nouns as singular – the entire group acting together, and so verbs and pronouns must agree accordingly:

• The board of directors of Elbowgrease, Inc. is voting to increase its
• The flamingo bocce team hopes each year to break its losing streak.

When you use the correlative conjunctions either-or and neither- nor, the verb and pronouns have to agree in person, gender, and number with the nearer subject.

• Neither the elves nor the cobbler [third person masculine singular] knows [third person, masculine, singular] where the extra boot nails are.
• Neither the cobbler nor the elves [third person masculine/feminine plural] know [third person masculine/feminine plural] where the extra boot nails are.
• Either Theodore or the twins [third person masculine/feminine plural] have left their [third person masculine/feminine plural] socks draped over the mantel.
• Either the twins or Theodore [third person masculine singular] has left his [third person masculine singular]socks draped over the mantel.

For grammatical purposes, two nouns or pronouns linked by “and” count as plural; the same nouns or pronouns linked by “or” count as singular:

• Lisette and Wolf-Diether dance the fandango.
• Lisette or Wolf-Diether dances the fandango

Sometimes you’ll come across sentences in which a noun is immediately followed by a prepositional phrase that adds information:

• the lowly underlings, as well as the mighty CEO,
• some types of shrubs, such as the forsythia

In cases such as this, do you use a singular or plural verb?  Which noun do you make the verb agree with?

• The lowly underlings, as well as the mighty CEO, [dreads? dread?] a visit from the hired efficiency expert.

You’ll have no trouble deciding once you find the “real subject” of the sentence.  Recall that the subject of a sentence may never be in a prepositional phrase.  To determine the agreement of the verb, “ignore” the prepositional phrases and the portion of the sentence set off by commas:

• The lowly underlings [, as well as the mighty CEO,] dread a visit from the hired efficiency expert.
• Some types of shrubs, [such as the forsythia,] act as lovely but effective boarders against one’s annoying neighbors.

This rule is true even when commas don’t set off the prepositional phrase[s]:

• An ice-cream truck’s chief task [singular] in summer is [singular] to deliver frozen, sugary treats.
• Children’s chief task [singular] in summer is [singular] to consume these treats.

Don’t forget the difference between the pronoun its [= of it] and the contraction it’s [= it is].  You never use an apostrophe to show possession in a pronoun – you don’t write “He brought hi’s pumpkin” or “Who’se feather is this?”  But if you’re ever confused about “its” vs. “it’s,” remember that you can “expand” the contraction to the original form and the sentence will still make sense; the pronoun has to stay the way it is:

• It’s time that my refrigerator got it’s spring cleaning.

Which is correct?  Well, try to “expand”:

• It is time that my refrigerator got it is spring cleaning.

Clearly the first makes sense while the second doesn’t, and so the first “it’s” is correct, while the second ought to be “its.”

THE SOLUTIONS

Now, having run through the information above, you should have a better idea of not only what’s wrong with the sentences at the beginning of the chapter but also of how to correct them. Let’s start.

• Problem: Everyone ought to bring their own sugar tongs on the hike.

Grammarians have been fighting for years about how to resolve this problem.  With the indefinite pronouns, traditional grammar requires the use of the masculine pronouns he, his, and him with indefinite pronouns.  You can see why this has lead to trouble:  it means that in a group of both men and women, only the men “counted” – even if in a crowd of 100 there were 99 women and only one man!  That won’t work.  So what do you do?

More recent (and more enlightened) grammar recommends the use of he or she, his or her, and him or her, and this is the practice we’ve adopted in this book:

• Solution 01: Everyone ought to bring his or her own sugar tongs on the hike.

Unfortunately, this system can become bulky:  “Everyone should know that he or she ought to bring his or her own sugar tongs with him or her on the hike.”  Yikes!

Thus, you might try the impersonal “one”:

• Solution 02: One ought to bring one’s sugar tongs on the hike.

However, this solution presents two problems.  The first is that once you start with “one,” you must stay with it:  You oughtn’t write “One ought to bring their own sugar tongs, as “their” doesn’t agree with “one” and is still plural, in any case.  A second problem is that the use of “one” strikes many writers and readers as too stiff and formal.  But other solutions are available.

You might, for instance, use masculine pronouns if you’re male and feminine if you’re female:

• Solution 03: Everyone ought to bring his sugar tongs on the hike. [male writer]

Everyone ought to bring her sugar tongs on the hike. [female writer]

“But,” you might reasonably object, “what does my gender have to do with what I’m writing?”  The simple answer is, It doesn’t.  If this solution strikes you as problematic, you might alternate between masculine and feminine pronouns:

• Solution 04: Everyone ought to bring his sugar tongs on the hike. [first use]

Everyone ought to bring her sugar tongs on the hike. [second use]

“Won’t that result,” you might ask, “in my having to make sure not only that I’ve alternated properly, but that I’ve used the same number of masculine and feminine pronouns?  If I haven’t, won’t readers notice?  And besides, I don’t want readers to be counting my pronouns – I want them to be following my ideas!”  These are excellent points.

Yet another option – and probably the easiest, which is why we recommend it – is simply to revise the sentence to eliminate the indefinite pronouns completely.

• Solution 05: All people [plural] should bring their [plural] sugar tongs on the hike.

Here, writer and reader are both happy because the sentence is correct and the meaning clear.

However, no matter which method you choose, the pronouns they, their, and them, which are plural, are incorrect with singular pronouns!

This principle applies to the next of our sentences as well:

• Problem: “It’s not enough for an Uber driver just to be on time,” explained Sergei. “They

also shouldn’t take 20 minutes trying to get out of a busy roundabout!”

• Solution 01: “It’s not enough for an Uber driver just to be on time,” explained Sergei. “He or

she also shouldn’t take 20 minutes trying to get out of a busy roundabout!”

We note above the agreement isn’t just for pronouns:  It applies to nouns and verbs as well.  Here, “an Uber driver” is singular – just one, yes? – and thus “they” doesn’t work.  Of course, you can also rewrite the sentence:

• Problem: “It’s not enough for Uber drivers just to be on time,” explained Sergei. “They

also shouldn’t take 20 minutes trying to get out of a busy roundabout!”

• Solution 02: “It’s not enough for an Uber driver just to be on time,” explained Sergei. “He or

she also shouldn’t take 20 minutes trying to get out of a busy roundabout!”

Here, “Uber drivers” is plural, so “they” works – and the sentence seems natural, too.  How about

• Problem: The Activities Committee has announced their latest plans to build a waterslide

in the common room.

• Solution: The Activities Committee has announced its latest plans to build a waterslide

in the common room.

In Standard American English – the kind of English used in college textbooks and college essays, for instance – collective nouns are singular when the members of the group are all acting together.  You see the problem in the first sentence – “their,” which is plural – and the solution in the second sentence – “its,” which is singular.

The case with correlative conjunctions is a little trickier:

• Problem: Either Fr. O’Shaughnessy or Sr. Maria Juliana forgot their water pistol.
• Solution 01: Either Fr. O’Shaughnessy or Sr. Maria Juliana forgot her water pistol.

With either / or and neither / nor, the word agrees with whichever noun is nearer.  Thus, if we were to switch up the sentence a bit, the result would be

• Solution 01: Either Sr. Maria Juliana or Fr. O’Shaughnessy or forgot his water pistol.

Of course, you may just rewrite the sentence entirely:

• Solution 02: Either Fr. O’Shaughnessy or Sr. Maria Juliana forgot a water pistol.

Connected to these ideas is the use of just “and” and “or” to join nouns:

• Problem: Thea or Melvin know where the windup spider is.
• Solution: Thea or Melvin knows where the windup spider is.

As we explain above, two or more nouns linked by “and” are plural – this makes sense.  However, nouns joined by “or” are singular.  You might think of the matter in this way:  If a friend were to offer you a cap of coffee or a cup of tea, how many would you end up with?  Just one, right?  This is why nouns “or” indicates a singular.

However, you may come across a sentence like this:

• Problem: The mayor in addition to the members of the town council vote today on the

proposal to erect a monument commemorating the invention on of window cleaner.

• Solution: The mayor in addition to the members of the town council votes today on the

proposal to erect a monument commemorating the invention on of window cleaner.

Remember to think of the phrases “in addition to” or “along with” or “as well as” and “such as” and the like as separate from the noun itself; in fact, as we demonstrate above, if you remove these phrases, you can much more easily find the (real) subject of the sentence and make any following pronouns or verbs agree.

Finally, we have

• Problem: Remember to place each lid by its jar:  We need to have exactly enough for

when we start to pickle the peaches!

• Solution: Remember to place each lid by its jar:  We need to have exactly enough for

when we start to pickle the peaches!

It’s likely that you’ve seen this error so often that it doesn’t register for you – but it will for your instructor!  When in doubt, “expand”:  it’s = it is.  If the sentence still makes sense, you’ve used the right form; if it doesn’t, then you want “its.”

ANALOGY

Agreement is the condition that results when the writer or speaker chooses verbs and pronouns for a sentence that match other key nouns in the sentence.  Verbs and pronouns don’t match key nouns in size, shape, or color, the way you’d match fabrics or furniture as you decorate a room; rather, they match the key nouns in number [the singular-ness or plural-ness of the nouns].

If a speaker or writer fails to have agreement, the result is not as catastrophic as a pilots’ strike or computer crash.  The result is instead a kind of quiet inconsistency of meaning, a slight contradiction in directions.

Have you ever called ahead to a place you have not visited before and asked for directions? A competent directions-supplier will first ask where you’re beginning your trip and then add layers of turns and stops and more turns, keeping some landmarks on your left and some on your right until you reach your destination.

Paying no attention to agreement in a sentence is like giving someone directions, including all the proper turns and stops, but placing some of the landmarks on the wrong side of the road. The landmarks appear, but they may be located other than where the listener had pictured. The result is certainly not disastrous, but why should your reader or listener have to make sense of something unclearly located that might just as easily have been placed correctly?

Here are two examples:

• The bucket of barbecued dragonfly wings were not covered tightly.
• Everyone must endeavor to keep their picnic foods tightly covered.

The first example demonstrates a problem of agreement between subject and verb. The trouble, of course, is that a prepositional phrase has been placed between the actual subject and verb. If the phrase were not there, the writer would surely have seen that the verb should have been was, not were. But for good reason the writer wants that prepositional phrase placed where it is. So it is the writer’s responsibility to make sure that the verb still agrees with the subject. Our readers understand how to decode properly written sentences for their meanings. The more easily decodable our sentences are, the more accurately our meaning will be conveyed.

The second example is harder. The English language lacks a singular pronoun that refers to a person but is genderless. We have it, but that won’t do for people, and we have they or them, but when we use they or them, we are telling our readers and listeners to decode the meaning as plural. If we want to use the many and varied singular subjects in English, great words like everyone or somebody, words which well encapsulate our culture’s ideals of individualism (for they do mean, respectively, every single person or some individual), then proper agreement calls for us to use he or she or his or her when placing related pronouns later in the sentence.  If we are not so bent on maintaining the focus on the individual, we will choose plural nouns early on in the sentence, words such as students, golfers, or drivers. Those plural nouns will agree readily with they and them and make our meaning clear at the same time.

The write or speaker of English has to understand that most of the words we choose to use in our messages can function as any one of several parts of speech, that they can be arranged in many possible orders, and that many subtle nuances of meaning can be added using modifiers and punctuation. However the basic structures of agreement help to provide an anchored framework for that flexibility, the way that landmarks help people anchor the big picture when they’re trying to follow complex directions.  Landmarks aren’t as helpful when you expect them on the right and they appear on the left. Keeping the framework intact is important for understanding.

LANGUAGE IN FLUX

Few grammatical issues have caused the firestorm of controversy that agreement has.  The problem lies in the fact that, in terms of grammar, indefinite pronouns are singular and thus require singular pronouns to refer to them.  English, lamentably, has no gender-neutral singular pronouns in common use.

As we’ve noted in the chapter, traditional grammar called for the masculine pronouns as a sort of “default” setting, and you’ll still run across, in formal and academic writing, sentences such as “Everybody brought his homework to class.”  A great many writers view this as sexist – the assumption is that either only men are present, or if women are present, they don’t “count.”  Be aware that if you choose to use “he, his, him” to refer to indefinite pronouns, you run the very great risk of offending your audience.

Because our plural pronouns are the same for all genders (i.e. “they, theirs, them”), in our spoken language we use for indefinite pronouns, too, e.g. “Everybody brought their homework to class.”  The problem here is that many find the lack of agreement illogical:  “everybody” is singular, while “their” is plural.  Despite this inconsistency, some authors choose to use the plural pronouns with indefinite pronouns.  Be aware, however, that the practice of using plural pronouns with singular referents has not yet gained wide acceptance.

In the chapter we’ve suggested a number of ways to get around the singular referent problem:  use “his or her” [though this can become awkward], use “one” [though this can sound too forced and unnatural], use your own gender for the pronouns [he for males, she for females – though here, admittedly, males may be perceived as using traditional grammar and thus slighting women].

Agreement with indefinite pronouns is a prime example of language in flux.  Perhaps sometime in the [not too distant?] future grammarians will themselves agree to accept “they, their, them” with everyone, someone, etc.  But until then, your safest bet is to rewrite your sentence to eliminate the indefinite pronouns [e.g. “All the students brought their homework to class”].  In this way you’ll be able to convey clear meaning without offending anyone – which is, after all, the aim of written expression.

THE BASICS:  AGREEMENT

• WHAT IS IT? “Agreement” means that nouns, pronouns, and verbs have to “match” each other in their forms:  number [singular or plural], person [first, second, or third], and gender [masculine, feminine, or neuter].
• WHEN DO YOU USE IT? Most of the time you’ll unconsciously make your sentence parts agree; however, the indefinite pronouns will probably make you stop and think.  Anyone, everyone, someone, no one, anybody, everybody, somebody, nobody, none, each, and every are all third-person singular, so their verbs need to have an “-s” on the end, and the pronouns you use to refer to them need to be third-person, too [he, she, it].  The basic rule to keep in mind is that singular must go with singular, and plural with plural.
• WHAT DOES IT LOOK LIKE? Most of the time you make sentence parts agree without thinking.  Most nouns in English form plurals by adding an “-s.” and usually all verbs share the same endings.  The only case [in addition to the forms of the verb “to be,” which are irregular] in which this isn’t true is in the present tense, third-person singular, in which you add an “-s.”

EXERCISE

Choose the correct verb or pronoun, whether singular or plural.

1. The piccolo band (practices / practice) every afternoon at three.
2. All of these new automatic earrings (comes / come) with a free box of soap.
3. “Oh, don’t worry,” commented Isobel as she made her way fearlessly through the underbrush. “None of these plants (is / are) poison ivy – probably.”
4. Nobody would like to find (himself or herself / themselves) left out of the sack race.
5. One rule that everyone learns is to leave the polo field neater than (he / they) found it.
6. Before we elect the new treasurer for the Begonia Lovers’ Club, each of the candidates will speak about (his or her / their) policies.
7. Some sorts of reptiles, such the Gila monster, (makes / make) charming pets.
8. Either Teofilo or Jenella must have left (his / her) paintball gun in the breakfast nook.
9. Either Jenella or Teofilo must have left (his / her) paintball gun in the breakfast nook.
10. After the incident with the paintballs guns, neither Teofilo nor Jana (is / are) allowed in the breakfast nook.

QUIZ

Agreements Quiz and Key