Ask Me a Question

If you have a writing, grammar, style or punctuation question, send an e-mail message to curiouscase at sign hotmail dot com.

Add Your Own Criminal Sentence!

If you find a particularly terrible sentence somewhere, post it for all to see (go here and put it in the Comments section).

Wednesday, June 12, 2013

Criminal Sentence 652: Involve Yourself in Correct Agreement

From a newspaper article about Plan B:

"The involvement of parents and medical professionals act as a safeguard for these young girls."

This is a classic subject-verb agreement error. The subject is "involvement" (singular) but the verb is "act" (plural). That pesky prepositional phrase ("of parents and medical professionals") got in the way.

The sentence should read as follows:

"The involvement of parents and medical professionals acts as a safeguard for these young girls."

This is still not a great sentence. I would suggest changing it to this:

"By becoming involved, parents and medical professionals act as safeguards for these young girls."

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

No wonder people have so much trouble with English.

singular verb - add 's'
plural verb - no 's'
singular noun - no 's'
plural noun - add 's'

dog runs
dogs run

That's not confusing at all.

The Sentence Sleuth said...

I agree the rules don't seem to make sense. That's not an excuse for native speakers, though!