One among the few shops that offer or offers

Question

One among the few shops in London that offer or offers designer clothes.

@GregLee Avoid answers in comments. We get it: standards for comments are low, they get an undeserved privileged position on the page above answers, and they cannot be community edited or peer reviewed. But this discourages people from posting actual answers and defeats the core answer ranking process. A better place to post an answer is in the answer box. See: “Privileges - comment everywhere”, “Is SE enforcing ‘no answers in comments’?”. — MetaEd, Feb 01 '18 at 17:43

Farhana · Answer 1 · 2018-02-01T13:48:57.033

1

One among the few shops in London that offer designer clothes.

"offers" is used when you talk about the singular thing but "shops" is plural so you have to use the offer.

sub+verb+s/es+object. this is present simple tense and in which you can see Verb should use s/es if Verb is singular.

edited Feb 01 '18 at 13:48

answered Feb 01 '18 at 10:08

Farhana

119

We're looking for answers that provide some explanation and context. Please explain why your answer is right, ideally with citations. Answers that don't include explanations may be removed. – David Feb 01 '18 at 13:41
see my edited post – Farhana Feb 01 '18 at 13:49
But the poster's confusion is that he doesn't know what the subject of the verb is — one, or shops. If I were explaining why "offer" is correct I would divide it into the two sentences joined by the conjunction "that", but I'm not going to bother as it has been flagged as a duplicate and will disappear in a couple of hours. – David Feb 01 '18 at 13:53

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 01 '18 at 12:36

It really comes down to whether you are referring to "one... which offers" or "the few... which offer". From your example, the actual focus of the sentence is somewhat ambiguous. More context would give better clues, for example:

"One among the few shops in London that offers designer clothes is located on Main Street" if you are referring to a specific shop in this category.

"One among the few shops in London that offer designer clothes may hold the item you're after" if you are referring to all such shops collectively.

One among the few shops that offer or offers

2 Answers2