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Anonymous Posted 7 years ago
Grammar

Is vs. Are

This is driving me nuts. In the below sentence, what is the appropriate verb?


There ___ a generous amount of errors in the document.


I am being corrected by Word when I put are, but if you drop "generous amount," which is a modifier (?) to the sentence, "There are errors" would be correct. You would not say "There is errors."

  

Top answer

) to the sentence, "There are errors" would be correct. Well, maybe so, but in a lot of sentences if you drop part of it, it changes what is correct. , error s , you're supposed to use 'number of', not 'amount of'.

— CalifJim

  • ) to the sentence, "There are errors" would be correct.
  • Well, maybe so, but in a lot of sentences if you drop part of it, it changes what is correct.
  • , error s , you're supposed to use 'number of', not 'amount of'.
  • , money, you're supposed to use 'amount of', not 'number of'.
  • This is real mistake.
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3 Answers
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anonymousif you drop "generous amount," which is a modifier (?) to the sentence, "There are errors" would be correct.

Well, maybe so, but in a lot of sentences if you drop part of it, it changes what is correct.

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Just an FYI, Word thinks that "is" is the proper verb for that sentence. Word did not care about the difference between number and amount. However, I do and I learned a fancy little tidbit with that, so thank you!
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There is / are a generous amount of errors in the document.

Normally the head of the subject NP (or of the displaced subject NP in existential there clauses, as here) determines the number of the verb, so the expectation would be that the verb here would be determined by the singular head "amount", giving the singular verb, "is".

But that's not the case. "

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