Numeric Words and Phrases

By Abhishek Tomar on Aug 20, 2009 with Comments 1

Often encountered the words “THE NUMBER OF” and “A NUMBER OF”. “THE NUMBER OF” word always takes the singular form where as “A NUMBER OF” always take the Plural form.

Now notice in the following example, word ” Students’ has been used but in the first example singular verb form has been used where as in the second plural form has been used.

The number of students in the class IS quite large

A number of students in the class ARE hard workers

Other numeric words such as “majority, Plurality, Minority” can be singular or plural based on the context of the sentence. If many of the individual parts of the totality is been referred as plural, then we use plural verb form. For Example:

The majority of the students in the class ARE hard workers

If one means the totality itself than we use the singular forms

The student majority IS opposed to the death penalty.

A Subject Form: Again Singular Form

Sometime the entire sentence in GMAT is entire phase or clause. These subjects require always singular and always takes singular verb form.

For Example:

Have good friends IS a wonderful thing.

Whatever they want to do IS fine with me.

Now it is good time to be confused. You must be thinking when we have used “FRIENDS” in first example than the verb form should be plural, according to the GMAT Subject-verb Agreement. Here we don’t look at single word but the entire phrase ” Have good friends” and thumb rule all subject form takes the Singular form so we used singular form IS.

When in doubt: THINK SINGLE

When ever you are in some problem in GMAT always think of the singular form. Most GMAT sentence can be solved by this rule. This is not always true but you have higher percentage of educational guess. Note: This rule should only be used when in doubt and should not be made a general rule.