Should I use "Is" or "Are" in a sentence that has two uncountable/abstract nouns as the subject?

Question

Which of the following is correct?

1. What is the fund manager's historical operating experience and track record?
2. What are the fund manager's historical operating experience and track record?

Answer 1

I wrote this answer for a similar question on another forum. I'm adapting it here.

The correct auxiliary verb is "are" or "were" in the past tense.

The trick is simple here. Let me explain.

If you get confused, look at the sentence

What is/are the fund manager's historical operating experience and track record?

Let us count how many relevant "nouns" there are in the part of the sentence that constitutes the necessity of "is/are".

The following are the nouns / noun phrases:

• Fund manager
• Operating experience
• Track record

Note: For clarity, I am considering groupings of words that make sense in the context, rather than going to the base concepts. In other words, I am skipping a few steps since I understand how these words are grouped together.

Now, all these noun phrases mean different things here. There needs to be a link between them.

So let us look at this part again.

We notice that there is a possessive case here, denoted by the apostrophe and the 's'.

But are they talking about the possession of one person or more than one person?

If they were talking about the possessions of more than one person, this exercise ends here. The verb needs to be plural (i.e., are).

But in this case, we are talking about the possession of a single person. So let us ignore the possessive clause for now.

So we have the phrases:

• Operating experience
• Track record

So these are two things which are very similar to each other. They are related to a profession and the performance of an individual.

But depending on the industry, they are not necessarily the same thing.

So, is there any other connector? YES!!!

The word "and" is used between the two phrases.

But does it combine the two things into ONE concept?

Again, this depends on your interpretation. But I'm going to consider that experience concerns a length of time while track record concerns quality of service.

So I will answer No.

We are still talking about TWO different things, separately.

So here, the auxiliary verb required is "are". The correct sentence is therefore,

What are the fund manager's historical operating experience and track record?

NOTE:

Please remember the method used here:

• Count the number of nouns.
• Connect them if possible.
• Count them again.
• Connect them again.
• and so on....

Answer 2

From Garner's Modern American Usage 3rd Ed:

Compound Subjects Joined Conjunctively. If two or more subjects joined by and are different and separable, they take a plural verb:

At the same time, the democratic process and the personal participation of the citizen in his government are not all we want. Few golfers appreciate the time, money and technical know-how that go into making a golf product.

So, according to the quotation, the second variant is correct: What are the fund manager's historical operating experience and track record?

Answer 3

For me, "Historical operating experience and track record" is a conceptual singular entity so, in the case of your statements, number #1 is correct—"What is the fund manager's historical operating experience and track record?"

I note that my answer entirely stems on considering historical operating experience and track record as two ways of saying the same thing, insofar as I am not a financial professional. If those are legitimate nouns describing entirely separate objects within the field of finance, then I would agree with @MichaelLogin's answer.