As an aspiring journalist, it is clearly important to have a good fundamental structure with regards to grammar. That being said, one of the most important parts of grammar is having a clear understanding of a sentence structure; it is vital to be able to isolate the individual components that come together to form a sentence, as well as understanding how each of these parts of speech works. Subjects (nouns) and verbs are truly the foundation of a sentence, and things like articles, adjectives, and adverbs are included to add colour and dimension. However, although subjects and verbs seem fairly self-explanatory, there are agreements between the two that must be followed in professional writing.
When subjects take singular form, there must be a singular verb that follows. The same can be said for plural subjects and verbs. An example of this structure would look like this:
She dances.
They dance.
Now, if for some reason these verbs were proceeded by subjects in a different form than previously stated, it would read as follows:
She dance.
They dances.
Clearly, it doesn't take an expert to spot this flaw, because it simply sounds incorrect. On the other hand, there are certain subjects that are improperly paired with verbs due to their confusing structure. Take for example, if you will, the following:
Three and three are six.
As first glance, this seems correct because the subject is compound, meaning more than one. However, having a compound subject does not automatically require a plural verb. Regardless of the sentence structure, the decision of making the verb singular or plural is based on the form of the subject closest to the verb. The latter result should read as such:
Three and three is six.
On a side note, when it comes to lyrics of songs, the subject-verb agreements are typically thrown aside for affect; singing "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" would be as pleasing to the ear as "There Is Not a Mountain High Enough."
The first set of comments (currently 34) under Lecture 3 highlights a number of news headlines in which students have identified the sentence subject and verb, and showed the way these words work together under the sentence-verb agreement. http://prow135journalists.blogspot.com/2010/01/lecture-3-grammar-and-journalism-20.html#comments
For more information on subject-verb agreements, check out this link: http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/GRAMMAR/sv_agr.htm
Grammar and sentence structure are very important in today's world. You have done a good job of explaining the use of Subject-Verb agreement in writing. In modern newsrooms the editors and writers and trying to do so much that sometimes they miss major grammatical errors. Editors who are very detail oriented and desire to see a clean copy published are desperately needed. I am sure no writer or editor wants to see an unclean copy published but sometimes the concepts of grammar are lost or there simply is not enough time to edit properly. The more clean a copy the more trusted the reporter becomes.
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