Subject-Verb Agreement- Interrupters and Inverted Sentences

INTERRUPTERS are not part of the subject. (Cross them out!) These include prepositional phrases and things set off by commas.

Ex. The girl in the blues shoes is my sister.

Pay attention to the subject and ignore the descriptive information. Who or what is the sentence about, or who or what is doing the action? Ex. Who is my sister? the girl, not the shoes

Ex. The houses in my neighborhood are all purple.

Ex. The first few minutes after the test were nerve-wracking.

Ignore clauses between commas. The subject is never between commas.

Ex. The cookies, which are chocolate and peanut butter, are delicious.

Ex. A frog, like human beings, breathes through lungs.

Inverted sentences mean that the subject does not come before the verb like with questions.

Questions are inverted. They still have to have agreement.

Ex. Why are birds so loud in the morning?

Some sentences are written inverted, but they are unusual.

Ex. Atop the mountain climbs the goat.

Sentence that begin with "here" or "there" are inverted. You must find the subject.

There was a black cat waiting at my door when I got home.

You can revert the sentence to helpp find the subject and verb and to help check if it is correct.

Ex. Ex. Why are birds so loud in the morning?

The birds are so loud in the morning...

Ex. Atop the mountain climbs the goat.

The goat climbs atop the mountain.

There was a black cat waiting at my door when I got home.

A black was waiting at my door...