2.2 Subject-Verb Agreement

Agreement

Agreement in speech and in writing refers to the proper grammatical match between words and phrases. Parts of sentences must agree, or correspond with other parts, in number, person, case, and gender.

• Number. All parts must match in singular or plural forms.
• Person. All parts must match in first person (I), second person (you), or third person (he, she, it, they) forms.
• Case. All parts must match in subjective (I, you, he, she, it, they, we), objective (me, her, him, them, us), or possessive (my, mine, your, yours, his, her, hers, their, theirs, our, ours) forms.
• Gender. All parts must match in male or female forms

Subject-verb agreement describes the proper match between subjects and verbs.

Because subjects and verbs are singular or plural, the subject of a sentence and the verb of a sentence must agree in number. That is, a singular subject belongs with a singular verb form, and a plural subject belongs with a plural verb form.

Singular: The cat jumps over the fence. 

Plural: The cats jump over the fence.