Agreement between a verb and its subject for number and person.
English requires that finite verbs agree with their subjects in number and person. In general, the English agreement system is extremely sparse, as the only form that requires a special agreement marker is the third-person singular in the present tense:
I/we/you/they go.
He/she/it/one goes.
The verb to be is the only exception to this rule, as it also has a special form for the first-person singular in the present:
I am.
We/you/they are.
He/she/it/one is.
Additionally, to be is the only verb with multiple past tense forms:
I/he/she/it/one was.
We/you/they were.
(The conjugation of the verb to be in the past subjunctive or "irrealis" construction is an exception to this pattern, using "were' for the singular as well as for the plural subject-pronouns: "If I/you/he/she/it/one/we/you/they were".)
Questions with this tag generally deal with more complex issues such as verb agreement with multiple subjects, or when the subject noun phrase has both a singular part and a plural part.
Related tags
This tag is for questions about verb agreement in number and person. When the question is about number agreement, it is appropriate to use both this tag and the grammatical-number tag.
For questions about what tenses to use in sentences with multiple verbs, use the tag sequence-of-tenses.
