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I need some help, because this is confounding me. I have the following sentence:

"The second column of leaves are to be submerged in distilled water (set DS)."

When I run this sentence through Microsoft Word's spell checking, along with other spell checking services, they say to correct "are" to "is". This seems wrong to me, but I am no professional. Would I correct it to "is", or keep it at "are".

The reason why I am asking on here is because this sentence seems to me to be some "exception" to the are versus is rules. If anyone could help me, I would appreciate it.

-Thanks

Anonymous
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  • The grammar checker of Microsoft Word are correct. Use "is". – MetaEd Sep 09 '15 at 22:43
  • You shouldn't in general put too much trust in spellcheckers, but in this case it happens to be right. It's always tricky to know whether the verb after a [group noun] of [plural noun] should agree with the verb based on the group noun or the plural noun—but in this case, the plural agreement does sound off. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Sep 09 '15 at 22:45
  • What makes you think this sentence is some kind of an "exception". It's a totally normal, by-the-rule example.

    The subject which goes the verb "be" here is "the second column", it's singular, not plural. It can be the column of anything, but regarding to the verb, it's still singular.

    Consider another similar example:

    • These 10 eggs are really fresh

    but:

    • A carton of half a dozen eggs is enough.
     – Jim Raynor Sep 09 '15 at 23:05
  • Note that some nouns refer to groups of people: e.g. audience, committee, government, team (collective nouns). Some collective nouns can take a singular or plural verb, depending on whether they are considered as a single unit or as a collection of individuals. However, I prefer considering them a single entity and thus, accompanied by singular verb ;) – Jim Raynor Sep 09 '15 at 23:08

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