Either OR and Neither Nor

By Abhishek Tomar on Aug 20, 2009 with Comments 0

Some of the GMAT sentence may contain Disjunctive phrases such as OR, Either ….Or; Neither…. Nor. Now what these words do is they singular subject and plural subject and plural subject to singular subject. The question here is what should be the correct verb, is it plural or is it singular? The answer is simple than you thought, just find out the subject near to the verb and take care that the subject agrees with the verb and here you have the answer.

Let’s see the Example:
Neither David nor his friends WERE at the party.
Neither his friends nor David WAS at the party.

Notice that both the sentences have DAVID and HIS FRIENDS but the verb changed according to the rule stated above i.e. subject near the verb governs the verb form.

NOTE: when words like “Neither” or “Either” are alone that is without “Nor”, “or”

Than the verb takes the singular form as they are not termed as disjunctive and thus the rule does not apply.