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About this tool
Drill the hard subject-verb agreement cases — intervening phrases, and/or subjects, indefinite pronouns, quantities and nouns that only look plural.
Subject-verb agreement means the verb matches the number of its subject — and the errors almost never happen in simple sentences. They happen when something sits between the subject and the verb, when two subjects are joined by or or nor, when a quantity or fraction is the subject, or when a noun such as news, mathematics or scissors misreports its own number. This drill isolates each of those cases, offers the two competing verb forms, and states the governing rule with the corrected sentence after every answer.
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Under 'What to practise', tick the categories you want: words between subject and verb, subjects joined by and/or/nor, indefinite pronouns, quantities and collective nouns, and nouns that only look plural.
Set Questions between 5 and 48, press 'New set of questions', then pick one of the two competing verb forms offered for each blanked sentence.
Every answer prints the full corrected sentence and names the governing rule, while the Score panel tracks correct, incorrect and blank against the pool size — 'Copy result' copies the score and the rules you missed.
Every item targets a rule that is genuinely mistaken, rather than padding the set with obvious sentences.
Each answer shows the full sentence written correctly and names the rule, so the pattern transfers.
Intervening phrases, compound subjects, indefinite pronouns, quantities and special nouns can be drilled one at a time.
It is 'is'. The subject is box, which is singular; 'of chocolates' is a prepositional phrase and prepositional phrases never change the number of the verb. The same rule gives 'the list of items has been sent' and 'one of my friends is a doctor'.
The verb agrees with whichever subject is nearer to it. So 'neither the manager nor the workers are satisfied' is plural, but reverse the two and 'neither the workers nor the manager is satisfied' becomes singular. Subjects joined by 'and' are simply plural instead.
In American English it is always singular: the team is winning. British English allows a plural verb when the members are acting as individuals — 'the committee have gone home' — but keeps the singular when the group acts as one body: 'the committee has reached a decision'.
Because the amount is being treated as one unit rather than ten separate miles. The same applies to sums of money and periods of time: 'twenty rupees is not enough' and 'five years is a long time to wait'.