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Complaining about the quality of the flight and the two requisite glasses of chardonnay before takeoff aren't reasons to sound any alarms.

Here, Grammarly is suggesting I change it to "Isn't." "Aren't" seems correct to me because it refers to the glasses of wine and the flight quality. Which is correct?

chop4lop
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  • The bad quality and missing drinks are plurals. "Complaining" isn't. – Yosef Baskin Oct 23 '22 at 16:31
  • Non-coordinate non-finite subject clauses have singular agreement, so the verb should be singular, i.e. "... isn't a reason to sound any alarms". – BillJ Oct 23 '22 at 17:09
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    It's singular *complaining, which isn't* a reason for sounding the alarm. The fact that someone might be complaining about several different things at once is irrelevant. – FumbleFingers Oct 23 '22 at 17:47
  • Complaining about the quality of the flight isn't a reason to sound the alarm. Two requisite glasses of chardonnay before takeoff are reason to sound the alarm. How on earth can putting them together in one sentence be is?? – Lambie Oct 23 '22 at 20:09
  • How do you complain about a flight before it takes off? I'm having a real problem parsing the stuff before aren't/isn't in a way that makes sense with either verb. Would someone care to supply few pair of parentheses? And why would you have to drink two glasses of wine, are they trying to reduce take-off weight ;) – Phil Sweet Oct 23 '22 at 20:33
  • @PhilSweet : It's the passenger who requires the wine — you know, to relieve take-off anxiety. Doesn't mean they're going to get drunk and try to hijack the plane. – Tinfoil Hat Oct 23 '22 at 21:12
  • @TinfoilHat It's a peeve of mine. I use requisite in the sense of onus, not in the sense of ones own needs. And I would say requisite two glasses, not two requisite glasses . – Phil Sweet Oct 23 '22 at 23:28
  • The subject clause is singular and thus requires singular agreement ("isn't"). The fact that the preposition "about" has two coordinated objects is irrelevant. – BillJ Oct 24 '22 at 07:16

1 Answers1

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Grammarly is thinking this:

Complaining... isn’t reason to sound any alarms.

And it is correct in its thinking.

However, assuming the passenger wasn’t complaining about the chardonnay, that’s not what you meant.

You meant:

Complaining about the quality of the flight isn’t reason to sound any alarms. And the two requisite glasses of chardonnay before takeoff isn’t reason to sound any alarms.

Try a rewrite to make parallel. Perhaps:

Complaining... and drinking... aren’t reasons to sound any alarms. —>

Complaining about the quality of the flight and drinking the two requisite glasses of chardonnay before takeoff aren’t reasons to sound any alarms.

Tinfoil Hat
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