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Having passion and determination is / are crucial to your future success.

I've searched google and there're results which give both as being correct.

Any rules for such structure "Having A and B is / are" ?

Ex:

  • Having a baby and a career is/are .....

  • Having a wife and a car is/are .....

Anyone can help with this?

CareBears07
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    It's syntactically irrelevant that passion and determination are plural (being two separate things). Compare Having a child is* challenging for a young mother* and Having six children is* challenging for a young mother*. The "state" of having one or multiple things is still just a single situation. – FumbleFingers Jul 15 '17 at 13:28
  • @EdwinAshworth: Apologies for not reading up more before posting. The link provided gave the solutions and explanations that i needed. Thanks. – CareBears07 Jul 15 '17 at 13:40
  • @FumbleFingers: Now i understand the concept of gerund. :) Appreciate your prompt reply! – CareBears07 Jul 15 '17 at 13:43
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    @FumbleFingers — Answering questions in comments against the injunction of the comment box. And the poster thanks you and goes away. And you've broken the SE question answer model. And new users will think because you ignore the injunction it's ok for them to do likewise. Why? – David Jul 15 '17 at 19:06
  • @David: Before posting that "answer in a comment", I'd already closevoted as a duplicate (if there hadn't been such an earlier dup here on ELU, I'd have closevoted with a request to migrate to English Language Learners anyway). In short, whilst I intend no disrespect to CareBears07, I don't really think this question should be here in the first place. And very likely if he/she posts another question (encouraged by success with this one), I'll be able to push harder for migration (which will benefit both sites and the OP, in the long run). – FumbleFingers Jul 16 '17 at 12:44
  • @David: I appreciate FumbleFingers in guiding me to the exact thread where i got all the explanations to my question. Being relatively new user here, i'm not sure why u were so agitated with others being helpful in providing advices/solutions in the comment box. Isn't this forum for everyone to learn & contribute at the same time? Your bashful attitude certainly runs afoul the community spirit that i experienced most of the time. – CareBears07 Jul 16 '17 at 13:08
  • No doubt you would also have been appreciative if he had followed SE protocol and answered as an Answer, rather than a Comment. Besides setting an example by not deliberately flouting the instructions in the comment box, this would have enabled others to up or down vote his answer to help users judge whether it was correct. It would also be marked as having an answer in the index. If @FumbleFingers was convinced your question is not appropriate here he should have informed you instead to help you learn what kind of questions are appropriate to SE ELU. Your personal remarks are certainly not. – David Jul 16 '17 at 16:01
  • @FumbleFingers — How much reputation do I need before I too have the privilege of playing god on this site? I can’t find it on https://english.stackexchange.com/help/privileges. Is it all right breaking the rules as long as you are a benovolent god? – David Jul 16 '17 at 16:11
  • @David: So far as I know, the only privilege I've got that you don't already have with your current rep is the ability to "protect" questions - which I've done maybe twice in over 6 years here. If you think my vote and/or comments here contravene site policy I encourage you to raise the matter on meta and we'll see what others think. I do try to fall in line with the majority view here on ELU provided it's not too far out of line with my natural inclinations. But I'm not clear what "rules" you think I'm breaking (or perhaps more importantly, what aspect of "majority opinion" I'm flouting). – FumbleFingers Jul 17 '17 at 13:18

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