ACT® · English: Usage Conventions
Agreement with Inverted Subject-Verb Order
When a sentence opens with 'There' or 'Here' or puts the subject after the verb, the verb still has to match whatever noun is actually doing the action, not the word sitting in front of it.
Normal English order is subject then verb: 'Three reasons are listed.' Flip that order and say 'There are three reasons,' and the sentence feels different even though the grammar hasn't changed. 'There' slides into the subject slot, and your ear relaxes and stops checking agreement. That's why 'There is three reasons' slips out: the brain matches 'is' to 'there,' a word with no number at all, instead of to 'reasons,' the word that actually controls the verb.
The fix is mechanical: find the real subject and put it back in front of the verb in your head. 'There are two exits' becomes 'Two exits are there.' 'Among the ruins stands a single carved column' becomes 'A single carved column stands among the ruins.' Once the sentence is back in subject-verb order, the correct form is obvious, because the ear is good at agreement when the words sit where it expects them. 'There' and 'here' are never subjects; they're placeholders that let the real subject move to the end of the sentence for emphasis or style.
This sits right next to ordinary agreement questions, but the test is different: here the trap is locating the subject, not knowing the rule once you've found it. Expect it paired with prepositional-phrase openers ('Among the ruins...', 'Behind the counter...') and compound subjects after the verb, where you have to check every noun joined by 'and' before picking singular or plural.
Key terms
- Inverted order
- Word order where the verb comes before its subject instead of after it.
- Expletive 'there'
- A placeholder word that fills the subject position but carries no number of its own.
- True subject
- The noun or noun phrase that actually performs the verb's action, wherever it sits in the sentence.
- Compound subject
- Two or more nouns joined by 'and' that together usually take a plural verb.
Watch it explained
- How it worksHow do you flip an inverted sentence back to normal order to see which noun the verb must match?
- Common mistakeWhy isn't 'there' the subject of 'There are two exits', when it sits exactly where a subject goes?
- Worked exampleFind the verb for 'Among the ruins ___ a single carved column' choosing between stand and stands.
Check yourself
End of topic.