Yesterday, while writing a real estate bio, I made a common mistake: I matched a verb to a noun in the prepositional phrase rather than to the subject.
The sentence went something like: “Each of his listings, from fixer to mansion, is …” But the first time through, I latched on to the word “listings” instead of the word “each,” and wrote “are.”
All I can say is that I’m glad I printed this out, let it sit overnight, and looked at it again this morning. When I read it with fresh eyes, the error jumped out and yelled at me. Thankfully, I didn't send that error to my client.
Once again, as with pronouns, the way to "see" the correct usage is to remove the extra “stuff.”
There is no way that I would have written “Each are…” But when I added in “of his listings” it was easy to hang that verb on the wrong word. Adding “from fixer to mansion” put even more space between the noun and the verb, and confused the issue even more.
A singular noun calls for a singular verb. A plural noun calls for a plural verb. Most of us match them up very well – unless extra words get in the way and confuse us.
Grammar book courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
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