Subject Verb Agreement - grants.kennesaw.edu

Subject–verbPronoun–antecedentDATA is a Plural word
Agreement
Subject-Verb Agreement
The subject of the sentence must agree with theverb that describes the behavior of the subject:Theboywantsto go to the movies.Theboyswantto go to the movies.Thedogisplaying.Thedogsareplaying.
Correct
Incorrect
Arandomsampleof 100 female studentswasselected for the studyThesampleandwasare in agreement with each other. The prepositional phrase (of 100 femalestudents) is irrelevant to the determination of agreement.
A random sampleof100 female studentswereselected for the studyThesubject (the random sample)and theverb (were)are not representing the same number.
Subject-Verb Agreement with a Twist
Pronoun–Antecedent Agreement
Antecedent= A word that comes before and “refers to” thepronoun(antecedent, 2014, definition 1) .The pronoun and antecedent mustagree, which means they must be the same in number.Lisalooks through the APA manual, whichshecherishes dearly.The studentslook through the APA manual, whichtheycherish dearly.
Correct Agreement
Incorrect
I will assign eachparticipantto complete the survey athis or herown desk.The antecedent (theparticipant) is singular and is in agreement with the singular pronoun (his or her).
I will assign eachparticipantto complete the survey attheirown desk.The antecedent (the participant) is singular and is NOT in agreement with the pronoun (their), which is plural.
Pronoun–Antecedent Agreement
Correct Agreement
Incorrect
The researcher instructed theparticipantsto eat one apple each day for 2 weeks attheirhomes.Participants andtheirare plural; therefore, they are in agreement with each other.
Eachstudentturned intheirpapers ontime.The antecedent (student) and the pronoun (their) are not representing the same number.Student = singularTheir = plural
Pronoun–Antecedent Agreement
Data
The worddatais a plural noun:The data are ready for analysisVery few people are aware of this fact; you will see people treatingdataas a singular noun all the time.The singular form ofdataisdatum, but I have never heard this word used except to state the fact that this is the singular form.Data is a mass noun, so:Less data, but fewer data pointsA large amount of data, but a large number of data points