Which is correct and why?
(A) "These Gif things that everyone IS posting about are so much fun..."
OR
(B) "These GIF things that everyone ARE posting about are so much fun.
Which is correct and why?
(A) "These Gif things that everyone IS posting about are so much fun..."
OR
(B) "These GIF things that everyone ARE posting about are so much fun.
I am sure mumbles will be here any minute to tell you that you are wrong
The subject is "everyone", which is a collective noun. The answer is A.
To figure out what the subject is, just look at the verb (in this case "posting") and ask yourself who or what is doing that.https://www.grammarly.com/blog/is-vs-are/
Is vs. Are with Collective Nouns
A collective noun refers to a group of people or things that is treated as a single entity in speech. Committee is a collective noun. A committee is made up of multiple people, but the word itself is singular in form. In American English, collective nouns take is. In British English, collective nouns can take is or are.
* The committee is considering the budget right now.
* The audience is getting antsy.
* The couple is moving to California.
But even in American English, a collective noun can take are when you need to emphasize the individual members of the group.
* The couple are keeping secrets from each other.
You can see that by making GIFs the subject, which is treated like a plural, the answer changes:
These GIF things that are moving around are so much fun.
Last edited by SrslySirius; 10-29-2017 at 03:15 PM.
I am 100% aware of "everyone" being a singular collective, and that "is", is almost always correct. But what are the "gif things" doing?
really vaughn you should stick to posting on your mintewlips acct
I just edited again because I realize now there are actually two subjects. There are also two state of being verbs, referring to each. But you still work it out the same way.
Who is posting? Everyone is posting.
What is so much fun? GIFs are so much fun.
These GIF things that everyone IS posting about ARE so much fun...
Forget about the sentence as a whole. The only thing that matters is the modifying clause "that everyone IS posting about". In that clause, 'everyone' is the subject. 'Everyone' is a singular pronoun. It gets IS, not ARE.
Answer is 100% A.
Why can't it be both? They're each referring to different things. It's easy to come up with examples like this.
Bob is a moron Astrologist who believes that stars are sentient.
Who's a moron Astrologist? Bob is a moron Astrologist.
What is sentient? Stars are sentient.
Bob is one person and stars are many.
If you had to be consistent with these verbs, look at the awful sentences you'd have to choose from:
Bob are a moron Astrologist who believes that stars are sentient.
Bob is a moron Astrologist who believes that stars is sentient.
If you ended the sentence with "...everyone is posting about suck" then what would be your reasoning?
This is oversimplification.
...Take this example and consider in the sentence in question that there are two subjects: The dog is being annoying. The cats are being annoying. Everyone is being annoying. -- combined: The dog, the cats, and everyone are being annoying. Do you not see how if you changed ARE to IS it would leave out the other nouns? Are the gif things not being posted about?
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