Grammar:

Subject-Verb Agreement

Some Basic Facts About Sentences and How Subjects and Verbs “Agree.”

Verbs and Subjects

A verb is at the heart of a sentence.

Action verbs tell what happens in the sentence.

Examples of action verbs: run, tell, swim, eat, see, jump

Be verbs level out an idea like an equal sign. For example: She is happy. (She = happy)

Examples of be verbs: am, is, are, was, were, be, being, been

We know that a sentence needs a verb and a noun (or pronoun) to be complete. Nouns or pronouns that perform the action of the verb are called the subject of the sentence. The subject of the sentence is the “doer” of the action. Let’s look at an example sentence:

Dogs (subj.) eat (v.).

In that sentence, we know that the dogs are the subject because they are performing the action (the verb), which is eat.

How Subjects and Verbs Agree

The main rule about subject-verb agreement is this: the verb must always agree with the subject in number. So, a singular subject needs a singular verb, and a plural subject needs a plural verb.

In the sentence we just looked at (Dogs eat), the verb, eat, is in the correct plural form according to the subject, dogs. So, we can say that the subject and the verb “agree.” Let’s look at an example where the subject and verb do not agree:

Dogs eats.

In this example, the singular verb, eats, is not correct because the subject, dogs, is plural. However, if we made the subject singular, eats would be the correct form of the verb. See below:

The dog eats.

Remember, the subject and verb in a sentence must always agree in number.