Is a list always treated as a plural?

Question

I was reading this web page https://www.mobility.siemens.com/global/en/portfolio/rail/rolling-stock/passenger-coaches.html

It says "From experience come speed, flexibility, and comfortable travel."

My first reaction was it sounded wrong, and should be "comes." But then if the list came first, you would say "Speed, flexibility, and comfortable travel come first" or "Speed, flexibility, and comfortable travel are important."

Does the order here matter? Should come be conjugated with "from experience"? Or would the list be treated as a single item in this case?

Hello, Michael. Does this answer your question? On verb/subject agreement in an inverted sentence I'd say it would be very unusual to regard 'speed, flexibility, and comfortable travel' as unitary, so the postposed subject dictates plural verb agreement. — Edwin Ashworth, Dec 24 '22 at 14:33
@Edwin: that's *not* the correct duplicate. I've just voted to close with a better duplicate (but still not maybe not the best one). — Peter Shor, Dec 24 '22 at 14:34
@Peter Yes; the title needs adjusting. We need 'agreement in inverted (specifically PP - V- S) sentences'. 'In the hole was a hobbit.' 'In the hole were two hobbits.' 'In the hole was/were a team of hobbitophiles.' But the last possibility has been covered ad nauseam. Possibly Inversion with a prepositional phrase is better, although it was closed. — Edwin Ashworth, Dec 24 '22 at 14:56

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Dec 24 '22 at 14:30

Experience cannot be the subject, since it's part of a prepositional phrase. So the subject is "speed, flexibility, and comfortable travel."

So is "come" the right verb form? Not necessarily. When a list comes after the verb, there are two possible ways of handling the verb agreement. See this question.

One way to handle this is to treat the list as plural, which would make come correct; this is the proper way for formal writing. The other way of handling this is to make the verb agree with the first element of the list, which would make comes correct; this way is quite common in spoken English and informal writing. So your first reaction, that it sounded wrong, was perfectly right for some dialects.

Is a list always treated as a plural?

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