In the sentence, "Jonathan Oldstyle and Diedrich Knickerbocker (was, were) two of Irving's pen name" do I use was or were?
-
Use a pronoun in place of the names... Which pronoun would you use?– CatijaCommented Nov 19, 2016 at 13:25
Add a comment
|
3 Answers
The straightforward answer is that, since there are two subjects, the subject is plural, and you should use were:
Ann and Mark were at the baseball game.
Milk and eggs were required to make the recipe.
The Lannisters and the Starks were friends of my family.
There isn't much more to say about this simple case, but if you are interested, you can read more about how to conjugate the verb when using compound subjects like "milk and cookies".
Were
Jonathan Oldstyle and Diedrich Knickerbocker were two of Irving's pen names
Were is (in this case) the 3rd person, plural past form of the verb be.
Was is (in this case) the 3rd person, singular past form of the verb be.
You have two subjects, Jonathan Oldstyle and Diedrich Knickerbocker, so the plural form is correct.
Here is an example where the singular form, was, would be correct:
Jonathan Oldstyle was one of Irving's pen names.
Note: use the plural names, rather than name, because you are talking about a collective of pen names, by saying two of, you are implying that there are many (more than one) pen names.
-
2Explaining why is more valuable than answering the question. If they know why this is correct, they will be able to address all such issues in the future. It's the difference between giving a person a ghoti and teaching a person to ghoti. :)– CatijaCommented Nov 19, 2016 at 13:28
-
@Catija Absolutely. That's what I'll be dedicating some time to now. The question doesn't ask why, it just asks which word to use, so I'm happy getting the direct answer out ASAP, and then explaining in detail why in an edit. Commented Nov 19, 2016 at 13:29
-
a collective of pen names doesn't mean much. The reason the sentence takes /were/ is simply because it has two subjects.– LambieCommented Nov 19, 2016 at 14:24
-
@Lambie I said exactly that "You are referring to two pen names, so the plural form is correct. ... The "collective of pen names" is there as a NOTE, even labelled and bold in the answer, to explain why name is a typo, there should be an -s added. Commented Nov 19, 2016 at 14:29
-
I read your explanation twice and did not see a clear explanation. It is not that you are referring to two pen names. It is that the two pen names are the subjects of the sentence.– LambieCommented Nov 19, 2016 at 14:32
The answer is were. Any sentence with two subjects takes a plural verb. The cat and the dog were sitting on the fence.
Jonathan Oldstyle and Diedrich Knickerbocker were two of Irving's pen name.
Jonathan Oldstyle and Diedrich Knickerbocker are the subjects of the sentence.
-
1