Ensuring that verbs agree with their subjects is a problem that less-experienced writers frequently have and, while it sounds complicated at first, the truth is that it’s a fairly simple problem to fix. In English, (and Latin and Spanish and some other languages) verbs have to be “conjugated” to reflect the person, tense, and mood being used. It’s easiest to see as a chart:
. | Singular | Plural |
First Person | I am | We are |
Second Person | You are | You all are |
Third Person | He/She/It is | They are |
This is the present tense English conjugation of the verb “to be” with the singular (one subject) on the left and the plural on the right. The simple past tense looks like this:
Singular | Plural | |
First Person | I was | We were |
Second Person | You were | You all were |
Third Person | He/She/It was | They were |
Here’s the trick. If you aren’t sure if your subject and verb agree, think about a person who speaks English well (your instructor, a well-spoken public figure, or someone you know who is well-educated, or [if you can’t think of anyone] Neil deGrasse Tyson), then read the sentence out loud and see if it sounds like something that person would say. Dr. Tyson wouldn’t say that “[w]e is part of this universe,” he would say that “[w]e are part of this universe; we are in this universe, but perhaps more important than both of those facts, is that the universe is in us.”