1.

Use verbs that agree with a subject, not with a noun that is part of a modifying phrase or

clause between verb and subject:

“The pot of eggs is boiling on the stove.”

2. Use singular or plural verbs that agree with the subject, not with the complement of the

subject:

“My favorite type of movie is comedies,” but “Comedies are my favorite type of movie.”

3. Use singular verbs with singular indefinite pronouns — each, the “-bodies,” “-ones,” and

“-things” (anybody, everyone, nothing), and the like:

“Neither is correct.” (And, just as in rule number 1, the presence of a modifier is irrelevant:

“Neither of them is correct.”)

4. Use plural verbs with plural indefinite pronouns:

“Many outcomes are possible.”

5. Use singular verbs with uncountable nouns that follow an indefinite pronoun:

“All the paint is dried up.”

6. Use plural verbs with countable nouns that follow an indefinite pronoun:

“All the nails are spilled on the floor.”

All of the pie is gone.
All of the pies are gone.
Some of the pie is missing.
Some of the pies are missing.
None of the garbage was picked up.
None of the sentences were punctuated correctly.
Of all her books, none have sold as well as the first one.

7. Use plural verbs with compound subjects that include and:

“The dog and the cat are outside.”

8. Use plural verbs or singular verbs, depending on the form of the noun nearest the verb,

with compound subjects that include nor or or:

The principal, Joey, or the teachers are there.

“Either the dog or the cats are responsible for

the mess.” (“Either the cats or the dog is responsible for the mess” is also technically correct but
is awkward.)

9. Use singular verbs with inverted subjects that include singular nouns:

“Why is my hat outside in the rain?”

10. Use plural verbs with inverted subjects (those beginning with the expletive there rather

than the actual subject) that include plural nouns:

“There are several hats outside in the rain.”

11. Use singular or plural verbs with collective nouns depending on meaning:

“His staff is assembled,” but “Staff are asked to go to the conference room immediately.” (In the
first sentence, the emphasis is on the body of employees; in the second sentence, the focus is on

compliance by each individual in the body of employees.)

Collective nouns such as team and staff may be either singular or
plural depending on their use in the sentence.
Examples: The staff is in a meeting.
Staff is acting as a unit here.
The staff are in disagreement about the findings.

12. Use singular verbs for designations of entities, such as nations or organizations, or

compositions, such as books or films:

“The United Nations is headquartered in New York.”

13. Use singular verbs for subjects plural in form but singular in meaning:

“Physics is my favorite subject.”

14. Use singular or plural verbs for subjects plural in form but plural or singular in

meaning depending on the context:

“The economics of the situation are complicated,” but “Economics is a complicated topic.”

15. Use plural verbs for subjects plural in form and meaning:

“The tweezers are in the cupboard.”

16. Use plural verbs in constructions of the form “one of those (blank) who . . .”:

“I am one of those eccentrics who do not tweet.”

17. Use singular verbs in constructions of the form “the only one of those (blank) who . . .”:

“I am the only one of my friends who does not tweet.”

18. Use singular verbs in constructions of the form “the number of (blank) . . .”:

“The number of people here boggles the mind.”

19. Use plural verbs in constructions of the form “a number of (blank) . . .”:

“A number of people here disagree.”

20. Use singular verbs in construction of the forms “every (blank) . . .” and “many a

(blank) . . .”:

“Every good boy does fine”; “Many a true word is spoken in jest.”

21. With words that indicate portions—percent, fraction, part,
majority, some, all, none, remainder, and so forth—look at the noun in
your of phrase (object of the preposition) to determine whether to use
a singular or plural verb. If the object of the preposition is singular,
use a singular verb. If the object of the preposition is plural, use a
plural verb.
Examples: Fifty percent of the pie has disappeared.
Pie is the object of the preposition of.
Fifty percent of the pies have disappeared.
Pies is the object of the preposition.
One-third of the city is unemployed.
One-third of the people are unemployed.
22. Use a singular verb with sums of money or periods of time.
Examples: Ten dollars is a high price to pay.
Five years is the maximum sentence for that offense.
Bottom Line:
• Lack—or overuse—of punctuation (especially commas) can alter meaning and/or
result in ambiguity.
• Ambiguous sentences are hard to understand and can be misinterpreted, thus
potentially putting lives at risk.

• Example 1:
• “Most of the time, travellers worry about their luggage.”
• Now delete the comma after the fourth word to totally change the meaning of this
sentence:

• “Most of the time travellers worry about their luggage”

• Example 2:
• “Stop clubbing baby seals”
 "Let's eat Grandma." vs. "Let's eat, Grandma!"

A comma: the difference between respecting your elders, and cannibalism.

A woman: without her, man is nothing.

A woman without her man is nothing.

Dear John:
I want a man who knows what love is all about. You are generous, kind, thoughtful. People who
are not like you admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me for other men. I yearn
for you. I have no feelings whatsoever when we're apart. I can be forever happy--will you let me
be yours?
Jane

Unfortunately, John was far from pleased. In fact, he was heartbroken. You see, John was
familiar with Jane's peculiar ways of misusing punctuation marks. And so to decipher the true
meaning of her email, he had to re-read it with the marks altered:

Dear John:
I want a man who knows what love is. All about you are generous, kind, thoughtful people, who
are not like you. Admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me. For other men, I yearn.
For you, I have no feelings whatsoever. When we're apart, I can be forever happy. Will you let
me be?
Yours,
Jane

With the oxford Comma:

We invited the strippers, JFK, and Stalin.
Without the oxford comma:
We invited the strippers, JFK and Stalin.

• When I sing well, ladies feel sick.

• When I sing, well ladies feel sick.

• Watch out – man eating apes!

• Watch out – man-eating apes!

• The man dropped the bullet in his mouth.

• The man dropped, the bullet in his mouth.

Wanted: One night stand

Wanted: One-Night Stand
Dear Mother-in-Law,

It was a shame you had to stay here. For such a short time, I thought I might have coped,
but it was unbearable. Seeing you leave, the relief was immense. When I heard we might
see you again soon, I wanted to end it all. By saying goodbye now, I hope I will not have to
say it to you again for a long time. If you have the opportunity to spend Christmas
elsewhere next year, please do.

Not much love

Matthew

Mother-in-law had a mini heart-attack after reading this letter, so she decided to be the good
person and assume that the above letter had punctuation misplaced and it actually read like
this-

Dear Mother-in-Law,

It was a shame you had to stay here for such a short time. I thought I might have coped, but
it was unbearable seeing you leave. The relief was immense when I heard we might see you
again soon. I wanted to end it all by saying goodbye now. I hope I will not have to say it to
you again for a long time. If you have the opportunity to spend Christmas elsewhere next
year, please do not.

Much love
Matthew

ambiguity through punctuation

Search Google for "punctuation ambiguity" and you will come up with some interesting results.
Punctuation ambiguity, it seems, is a psychological hypnosis technique. Interesting—but not
what we're going to focus on here. For us, punctuation ambiguity is ambiguity due to punctuation
—or lack thereof.

Ambiguity through punctuation is probably the most common type of ambiguity that one
encounters nowadays (thanks to texting and email). While you can often figure out what the
speaker means to say despite an ambiguity, it will probably take a good deal more effort
decoding it than it would have for the speaker to punctuate correctly in the first place. We'll
begin with a perpetually relevant example. Suppose you were to read this:

"I like cooking my grandmother and my dog."

What is your reaction? Presumably, disgust. At the very least, curiosity. Why? Because there is
nothing truly ambiguous about the sentence above. We must assume, rather, that the speaker did
not mean to betray a liking for cooking his or her family and pets. This leaves us to assume that
the speaker meant to punctuate like so:
"I like cooking, my grandmother, and my dog."

Much more family-friendly. Now consider these:

"Woman: without her, man is a savage."

"Woman, without her man, is a savage."

Without punctuation, the two sentences are identical. With their respective punctuation, the
meaning is changed quite significantly. The same could be said for the statements "No, don't
stop!" and "No! Dont! Stop!" But you get the point.

Ambiguity & Garden Path Sentences

If a sentence is ambiguous, it can have more than one meaning. There are many types
of ambiguity. For example, in the following sentence the word bank could mean the edge of a
river, or a financial institution:
• John went to the bank.
This is called lexical ambiguity because it is the result of one of the words having more than one
possible meaning. This next sentence is syntactically ambiguous(the syntax, or grammar, can
be understood in more than one way):
• Put the box on the table in the kitchen.
Is the box already on the table, and to be put in the kitchen? Or is the box to be put on the table
which is in the kitchen? From the sentence alone we cannot tell.
Try reading the following sentences. They are called garden path sentencesbecause they are
easily misunderstood (they lead you down the garden path) even though they are all
grammatical! Don't worry if some of these sentences seem like nonsense at first (you have
been garden pathed); they will be explained below.
Definition
In psycholinguistics, a garden-path sentence is a sentence that is temporarily ambiguousor
confusing because it contains a word group which appears to be compatible with more than one
structural analysis. Also called a syntactic garden-path sentence.
"This would not happen if the interpretation of a sentence was deferred until it had been heard or
read in its entirety, but because we try to process the sentences as we perceive them word by
word, we are 'led down the garden path'" (Mary Smyth).

According to Frederick Luis Aldama, a garden-path sentence is often brought about by "tricking
readers into reading nouns as adjectives and vice versa, and leaving out definite and indefinite
articles that would otherwise guide the reader to a correct interpretation" (Toward a Cognitive
Theory of Narrative Acts, 2010).
 • The prime number few.
• Fat people eat accumulates.
• The cotton clothing is usually made of grows in Mississippi.
• Until the police arrest the drug dealers control the street.
• The man who hunts ducks out on weekends.
• When Fred eats food gets thrown.
• Mary gave the child the dog bit a bandaid.
• The girl told the story cried.
• I convinced her children are noisy.
• Helen is expecting tomorrow to be a bad day.
• The horse raced past the barn fell.
• I know the words to that song about the queen don't rhyme.
• She told me a little white lie will come back to haunt me.
• The dog that I had really loved bones.
• That Jill is never here hurts.
• The man who whistles tunes pianos.
• The old man the boat.
• Have the students who failed the exam take the supplementary.
• The raft floated down the river sank.
• We painted the wall with cracks.
• The tycoon sold the offshore oil tracts for a lot of money wanted to kill JR.
All of these sentences are grammatical. Did you understand them all? Unless you are a linguist
who has studied syntax and garden path sentences, the answer is probably "no".
Here the sentences are clarified by adding some extra words:
• The prime (people) number few.
• (The) fat (that) people eat accumulates (in their bodies).
• The cotton (that) clothing is usually made of grows in Mississippi.
• Until the police (make the) arrest, the drug dealers control the street.
• The man, who hunts (animals), ducks out on weekends.
• When Fred eats (his dinner) food gets thrown.
 • Mary gave the child (that) the dog bit a bandaid.
• The girl (who was) told the story, cried.
• I convinced her (that) children are noisy.
• Helen is expecting (for) tomorrow to be a bad day.
• The horse (which was) raced past the barn, fell (down).
• I know (that) the words to that song about the queen don't rhyme.
• She told me (that) a little white lie will come back to haunt me.
• The dog that I had (as a pet) really loved bones.
• (The fact) that Jill is never here hurts (me).
• The man who whistles (all the time) tunes pianos (for a living).
• The old (people) man the boat.
• (Please) have the students who failed the exam take the supplementary.
• The raft (that was) floated down the river, sank.
• We painted the wall (that was covered) with cracks.
• The tycoon, (who was) sold the offshore oil tracts for a lot of money, wanted to kill
JR.
Notice that there are two types of ambiguous sentence: either there is a local ambiguity (one
that is cleared up once you have heard the whole sentence) or it is a global ambiguity (one that
remains even after the entire sentence has been heard). Garden Path sentences normally
have local ambiguity.
• Locally ambiguous: The old train...
"Train" could be a noun ("The old train left the station") or a verb ("The old train the
young").
• Globally ambiguous: I know more beautiful women than Julia Roberts.
This could mean "I know women more beautiful than Julia Roberts" or "I know more
beautiful women than Julia Roberts does".