by Jennie Ruby
Below is an actual grammar emergency that arrived last week from a "skills and drills" reader:
Dear Jennie,
Here is a sentence we are struggling with. I believe the verb should be singular (was), but maybe its plural (were).
"Among his deficiencies was an inability to act decisively, drive innovation, and build and manage partnerships with others in the organization who were important to the success of his area."
If you can solve the mystery, please let me know.
Here is the solution to the mystery: the verb should be was, because the front of the sentence does not contain the subject of the sentence--it is merely a prepositional phrase. The true subject of the sentence is the word inability, which is singular. The sentence is problematic because the way it is worded, he has one inability to do a number of things, so to the reader, there is a sense of plurality because of the whole list of things, which is at odds with labeling all these things as just one inability. The sentence might sound better if you made the subject plural, something like this:
"Among his deficiencies were an inability to act decisively, an inability to drive innovation, and a failure to build and manage partnerships with others in the organization who were important to the success of his area."
That way, among his deficiencies were three things: an inability to this, an inability to that, and a failure to this and that. You might be able to think of another word for the second inability.
The way it is worded now, grammar calls for singular:
"Among his deficiencies was an inability to act decisively, drive innovation, and build and manage partnerships with others in the organization who were important to the success of his area."
About the Author: Jennie Ruby is a veteran IconLogic trainer and author with titles such as "Essentials of Access 2000" and "Editing with MS Word 2003 and Adobe Acrobat 7" to her credit. Jennie specializes in electronic editing. At the American Psychological Association, she was manager of electronic publishing and manager of technical editing and journal production. Jennie has an M.A. from George Washington University and is a Certified Technical Trainer (Chauncey Group). She is a publishing professional with 20 years of experience in writing, editing and desktop publishing.
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