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By Justin Doff
Once you put in the hard work to know and detect GMAT sentence correction errors, you're going to catch those mistakes all around you.
A recent example: one of my British friends and I were watching futbol (I'll go with the Spanish spelling so as to not confuse sports), and I picked up on a weird (but commonly accepted) verb agreement error in futbol journalism---using a plural verb/pronoun to refer to a single team.
If you are referring to a singular entity, regardless of what it contains, is the subject singular or plural? Perhaps a silly question, and here are some perhaps really obvious examples:
The coach is...
The league is...
This team is...
BUT, then, take a look at these actual news stories from the European press:
"Real Madrid have a golden opportunity to open up a huge lead in the Champions League group stage..."
"AC MILAN have hit back at speculation that Mario Balotelli could be in line for a shock move to Chelsea..."
"AC Milan are fighting for a place in the top three..."
If you watch a futbol match live, you'll hear that curious error even more frequently.
According to the GMAT, all three of these examples are incorrect, because the subject is the team and not its players.
That being said, here's where things get really contorted: what if the team name is plural? For example, if we were referring to my favorite team, the Los Angeles Lakers, would we use "is" or "are"?
Well, technically it should still be "The Los Angeles Lakers is..." because the subject is still just a singular team, but thankfully the GMAT has never tested that variation.
Questions? Comments? Topics you'd like to see me cover in a future blog entry? Please share them in the comments! Until next time, be well!
