Compound Subjects

Compound subjects, as the name implies, are subjects that are put together with a conjunction such as “and.” The key to identifying compound subjects is to notice that the conjunction “and” renders the subject plural.

How to Nail It: Circle the “and” to remind yourself that the subject is plural.

Look at these simple examples:

1. John, Susan, and I, despite our shared taste for Indian cuisine, are still intimidated by extremely spicy foods.

Collective Nouns

Collective nouns represent entities made up of many parts, but they are always treated as singular units, and so they agree with singular verbs. Some popular collective nouns include “team,” “group,” “audience,” “committee,” “corporation,” “company,” “family,” and “jury.” Notice that all of these nouns incorporate many parts but they agree with singular verbs, e.g. “my family is here,” “the jury has spoken,” etc.”

How to Nail It: Eliminate Prepositional Phrases

On the GMAT, collective nouns will often come paired with prepositional phrases that make it seem as if they should agree with plural verbs, e.g. the team of lawyers is here. Often, our natural instinct in this case is to make the verb plural, since we hear the plural in the prepositional phrase “of lawyers.” Get in the habit of crossing out the prepositional phrases attached to nouns so that you avoid this mistake.

Indefinite Pronouns

Indefinite pronouns are words the replace nouns; here is a table of some indefinite pronouns, organized by those that are always singular, always plural, and singular or plural (contingent upon prepositional phrase attached).

The singular indefinite pronouns far outnumber the plural and “singular or plural” indefinite pronouns (the list, in fact, is far from complete). For the GMAT, worry about singular and “singular or plural” indefinite pronouns since we rarely make mistakes with plural indefinite pronouns.

How to Nail Singular Indefinite Pronouns: Cross out prepositional phrases and watch out for pronouns that refer to indefinite pronouns.

1. Each of my friends is going to business school. (Cross out the prepositional phrase to realize that “each” agrees with a singular verb).

2. Everybody knows that his or her grade will improve on the test. (Watch out for pronouns that refer to singular indefinite pronouns; while many of us would say “their” instead of “his or her,” we must remember that “everybody” is a singular pronoun).

How to Nail “Singular or Plural” Indefinite Pronouns: Let the prepositional phrase do the talking; with these pronouns, the noun after the prepositional phrase is the one that determines the verb.

1. All of my friends are at the party

2. All of the building is destroyed’

3. None of my friends are at the party

4. None of my training was utilized.

Test your GMAT sentence correction skills with this GMAT practice question.