When do i use are instead of is

The cat and the dog are eating as fast as they can. Grammarly can save you from misspellings, grammatical and punctuation mistakes, and other writing issues on all your favorite websites. A collective noun refers to a group of people or things that is treated as a single entity in speech. Committee is a collective noun. A committee is made up of multiple people, but the word itself is singular in form.

In American English, collective nouns take is. In British English, collective nouns can take is or are. The committee is considering the budget right now.

The audience is getting antsy. The couple is moving to California. But even in American English, a collective noun can take are when you need to emphasize the individual members of the group. It just looks exactly like the plural form. The same goes for "were" in the past tense, or for any other verb in second person: The form of the singular is identical to that of the plural. The other answer is that "you" is always plural.

Or at least, it was so historically, and that has carried over into the present in verb conjugation. Formerly, English had two separate second person pronouns: "thou" and "ye". Meanwhile the plural nominative subject form "ye" was replaced in all uses by "you", formerly limited to objective uses. Now in the present case, we can use "you" as either singular or plural, but it still always takes a plural verb, as it has always done. It should also be noted that even when "thou" was the singular form, the second person singular of the verb was not identical to third person singular, but rather:.

Actually, the English verb to be has "lost" the form for the second person singular and uses the plural form "you are" also as a substitute for the second person singular. Remark The second person plural is also used for the second person singular, if you want to see it this way. But you can also say in English everybody, even a single person, is addressed in a respectful way as if the person were several persons. If you are interested in the historical process of this development you'll find information in en.

What colour are yours? Are you going to train on Sunday morning? Is your son coming to watch you play? Is the match going to be televised?

Note that for a question involving the subject pronoun I the verb form am is needed: Are you working at the moment? Am I disturbing you? Come in. Are you laughing or crying? This book is very sad.

Is it upsetting you? But I want to finish it. So do you have a lie-in on Saturdays? Do you have breakfast on Saturdays? I start the day with lunch. Does your sister have a new boyfriend? In my native German, the equivalent of the variant with are is definitely the only correct one, even in colloquial speech. That's why I have paid some attention to the different situation in English.

Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. When do I use "are" instead of "is" with a measurement? Ask Question. Asked 6 years, 5 months ago. Active 6 years, 5 months ago. Viewed 6k times. When writing measurements or time, do you use the plural form "are" or the singular form "is"?

Improve this question. Ben Kovitz Ananymous Ananymous. Your question should be asked at ELL, our sister site for those who are learning the English language. BTW, it's "there are".