What is happening to the English language? I learned the difference between singular and plural nouns while in elementary school. That was reinforced during middle school, high school and college. It ...

The couple is going to purchase the house? Or the couple are going to purchase the house? Even after all my years of editing, I can still get tripped up trying to make verbs agree with collective ...

I recently fielded questions about two subject-verb agreement errors that readers noticed in the media. One was heard on an NPR program. The other was committed by, um, a columnist who should have ...

It’s spring cleaning time — an opportunity to sweep out dust bunnies lurking in recesses of recent reading. Let’s start with various forms of disagreement between singular and plural elements in a ...

Although English-language verbs generally don’t inflect or change in form to agree with the subject in number, they do so in the present tense, third-person singular. In English grammar, in this ...

Written for THE NEW YORK TIMES SATUR- DAY REVIEW By the Hon. John W. Foster. Formerly Secretary of State, United States Minister To Russia, Spain, &C. TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home ...

“He is one of the people who consistently supports our positions.” That’s how Jim Sedlak, director of public policy for the American Life League, described John Ashcroft, President-elect George W.

Some keen-eared Radio National listeners recently took issue with the following sentence, delivered on a book review program: "There's heartbreaking scenes in Murakami's new novel." It's not that the ...

As terse as they normally are, newspaper headlines are designed to get your attention by, as much as possible, summarizing the main body text. Two words in last week’s headline of this column; ...