SUBJECT-VERB AGREEMENT

What is Agreement?
Agreement or concord happens when a word changes form depending
on the other words to which it relates. It is an instance of inflection, and
usually involves making the value of some grammatical category
"agree" between varied words or parts of the sentence.
*Whereas our topic means agreeing our subject and verb of sentence
onto a point.
For better understanding of our topic let us discuss an example:
EXAMPLE: -The dogs barks.
When we see or listen to this sentence there’s a sense of some error and
we can even point out what the error is but what we can’t do here is
explain what the error basically is and my topic will explain that to you.
So the correct sentence for above example was:
CORRECTION: The dog barks.
In order to write the sentence grammatically correct we must learn these
certain rules of subject-verb agreement, which are enlisted below:
 Although there are approximately 40 rules of subject-verb agreement but
we are going to consider these 10 basic rules.
The common errors of the sentence observed and tricks to remove these
errors are also pinned below:

The noun closest to the verb is not necessarily the subject!

Subject-verb agreement errors can be hard to see when subjects and verbs
don’t appear directly next to one another.

Try to simplify the sentence by eliminating any phrases that come between the
subject and verb. This will make subject-verb agreement errors more obvious

EXAMPLE:
Incorrect:

 Istanbul, the most populous of all European cities, were founded in the first
millennium BCE.

Correct:

 Istanbul, the most populous of all European cities, was founded in the first
millennium BCE.

Explanation: While “cities” is close to the verb, it's not the subject of the verb.

Get rid of the distracting phrase:

Istanbul... was founded.

 Top tip: Flip inverted sentences

Sometimes, a subject comes after the verb. When this happens, subject-verb
agreement errors can be hard to spot.

If you notice an inverted sentence, try flipping the sentence so that the subject
comes right before the verb.

EXAMPLE:
Incorrect:

 Separating the roads were a concrete median.

Correct:

 Separating the roads was a concrete median.

Explanation: While “roads” comes right before the verb, the subject of the verb
is actually the singular noun "median", which comes later.

Flip the subject and verb:

A concrete median was separating the roads

Top tip: Compound subjects are plural

Compound subjects are plural subjects. It can be easy to miss subject-verb

agreement errors when a verb has two singular subjects.

EXAMPLE:
Incorrect:

 The horse and the donkey lives in the barn.

 Correct:

 The horse and the donkey live in the barn.

Explanation: Even though both “horse” and “donkey” are singular nouns,
together they form a compound subject that requires a plural verb.

Top tip: Collective nouns are singular

It's easy to miss subject-verb agreement errors when collective nouns are paired
with a plural verb. But remember: Collective nouns (e.g., family, group, bunch,
etc.) are singular.

EXAMPLE:
Incorrect:

 Erica’s family own and operate a pet store.

Correct:

 Erica’s family owns and operates a pet store.

Explanation: “Family” is a collective noun; so, while it refers to more than one
person, “family” is singular. Therefore the compound verb phrase “owns and
operates” must also be singular.

Top tip: Fix the common flaw

Flawed subject-verb agreement is a very common error type. If it is present,

forget anything else that might seem weird to you about the sentence—the
choice that fixes the common flaw will be the answer.
These were some of the tips in order to simplify the rules of subject-verb
agreement for you.
Let us suppose one more condition in which we don’t know the meaning
of some particular word than how will we be able to identify either that
subject or verb is singular or plural?
*Than we’ll have to guess the meaning of that word by using rest of the
sentence as clue.