Every good story needs a nice (or not so nice) turn or two to keep it interesting. It’s very common to hear there’s with plural nouns, as in There’s a few slices of pizza in the fridge or There’s two hundred tickets left. One trick to tell if the nouns are independent from each other is to divide the sentence into two sentences and see if the meaning stays the same. For example: The baseball players and the manager were disappointed after losing the big game. As Dave points out, the plural doesn't preclude zero or one of the objects. The number of balls doesn't matter, only the number of possessors (in this case, boys). What reason should I give for no longer wanting to work for my company? Use customers’ with the apostrophe after the “s,” to show the possessive plural form of two or more customers. Not all subjects using and to connect nouns are plural, though. One is Selecting appropriate study topics. Does that apply to me? Sentence subjects that have multiple nouns connected by and that refer to a singular thing require singular verbs. In such instances, it is best to reword the sentence to something along the lines of. Teacher assigned a book that will be too upsetting to our child because of the anxiety she’s facing during the pandemic. I created this site to share high-quality research-based content on kids, parenting and navigating the school system. As a technical writer, I've always used the plural, and recommended it in our graphical interfaces. APStyleManual "When -s or -es is added parenthetically to a word to express the possibility of a plural, the verb should be singular. Thanks for the response. This differentiates a customer from a client who seeks professional services from a business on an ongoing basis. Are the people in 'Everyone' and 'Everybody' sentences referred to using singular or plural grammar? This means that when referring to one of them, the -s is absent. Are you asking whether the singular or plural should be used or whether or not to use the article when using (s)? The multitude of ways that we can use an apostrophe often leads to its misuse. Or Which pets do you like best? As a comment, I didn't have space to explain it properly. This means it conforms to the standard grammatical rules, like pluralization. The possessive form is not limited to people; animals and even inanimate objects can also, technically, possess something, like qualities, for example. Plural or singular when being asked “what's the unit of a number”. Q: I’m writing a letter and am uncertain whether subjects joined by and should be singular or plural. What is the meaning behind Simeon’s words in Luke 2:29-32; 34-35? nl: How to start line numbers on the second line? Perhaps to get to the bottom of why the word may be so confusing, there is a need to look at its origins.