A Truly Beautiful Mind | English (Subject–Verb Agreement) Grade 9 CBSE

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The rules of subject–verb agreement

Every rule below decides one thing: does the verb take its singular or its plural form? Tap each rule to see it stated with a quick original example.

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The three big ideas

The core rule — a singular subject takes a singular verb, and a plural subject takes a plural verb. The bird sings. → The birds sing.
Third-person singular adds -s/-es — for he, she, it (or any single person or thing), the present-tense verb gains an ending. He reads. · She watches. · The clock ticks.
Watch the middle phrase — words can sit between the subject and the verb without changing the agreement. The verb still answers to the real subject, not to a noun in the phrase.

Worked example. Choose the right verb: The list of items ___ (is/are) long.

Step 1 — find the real subject. The sentence is about a list, not about the items. The subject is list.

Step 2 — set the phrase aside. of items is just a phrase describing the list. Ignore it when choosing the verb.

Step 3 — match. List is singular, so the verb is singular: The list of items is long.

Common mistake: letting the verb agree with the nearest noun instead of the real subject. A plural noun inside a phrase tempts you into a plural verb — but the verb belongs to the subject. Write The box of chocolates is on the table (subject = box), never “The box of chocolates are on the table.”

Joined by “and” → plural — two subjects linked by and usually act as a pair and take a plural verb. Rahul and Meera are on the same team. · The pen and the ruler are in my bag.
Joined by “either…or / neither…nor” → nearer subject wins — the verb agrees with whichever subject is closer to it. Neither the players nor the coach was happy. (nearer = coach, singular) · Neither the coach nor the players were happy. (nearer = players, plural)
Order matters — because the nearer subject decides the verb, flipping the two nouns can change the verb. Read up to the verb and check the word right before it.

Collective nouns → usually singular — words like team, class, family, jury, crowd name one group acting together, so they normally take a singular verb. The class is on a trip. · The jury has reached a verdict.
Indefinite pronouns → singular — everyone, everybody, someone, each, either, neither, nobody, no one all take a singular verb. Everyone is welcome. · Each of the answers looks correct.
Don’t be fooled by a following phrase — in Each of the students has a book, the subject is each (singular), not students. The phrase “of the students” does not make it plural.

Where you'll meet it

Agreement, at work

Writing correct formal English

Exams, applications, reports and emails are all judged partly on clean grammar. Getting the verb to agree with its subject — even across a tricky phrase or a compound subject — makes your writing read as careful and confident rather than careless.

Editing your own work

Agreement slips are the easiest errors to fix once you can spot them. When you proofread, find the real subject of each sentence, cross out the phrases in between, and check the verb against it. One quick pass catches most mistakes before anyone else sees them.

Check yourself

Competency quiz

Modelled on the competency-based pattern — MCQ, assertion–reason and a case study, testing whether you can apply the agreement rules to fresh sentences, not just recall them.

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