10 Grammar Rules Every Teacher Should Know

He and I spent all day in the sun.
He…spent all day in the sun. (CORRECT!)


She told he and I about the book.
She told he… or She told I…about the book. (WRONG!)


Remember, too, not to put yourself first when combining pronouns: “him and me” not “me and him.”
Rule # 5 Force Your Subjects and Verbs to Agree
When you hear “verb subject agreement” it means that the verb form in a sentence matches its subject form. Luckily for us, there are only two forms that verbs and subjects can take: singular and plural. To match, singular subjects have singular verbs and plural subjects have plural verbs. You do this unconsciously all the time:

He goes to the store.

They go to the store.
Millions watch his show.
I learn many things from books.

You and I (not me, mind you) get into trouble in complex sentences where the verb and subject aren’t right next to each other or where there is more than one subject (called a compound subject). For example:

Subject Verb

Cicely, who works with young kids, carpools 30 miles each day.
Subject Verb
A doctor and two lawyers from UW argue about politics the whole way.

For compound subjects (like the one above), you have to do some detective work before you can determine whether you use the singular or plural form of the verb. The clue you’re looking for is the conjunction. “And” makes ALL compound subjects plural, even if they are made up of singular nouns. Thus:

A butcher, a baker and a candlestick maker go merrily, merrily along.

Mechanics and a welder begin their strike Wednesday at noon.

Should “or/nor” be the conjunction, things get a little trickier. With these the compound subject is singular if it is made up of all singular nouns. It is plural if at least one noun is plural. For instance:

singular singular singular

A butcher, a baker or a candlestick maker makes the girls cry.

plural singular

Neither the mechanics nor the welder ever leave a tip for the waitress.


Short Cut
As with the combined pronoun rule, the tried-and-true test for verb subject agreement is to drop all but one of the nouns and see if each fits. When you have “or” and at least one plural, though, the singular nouns will sound wrong. Think of it as the plural noun(s) carrying the most weight. Thus, the verb is plural for all of the subjects.