Knowing the correct grammar and spelling are the building blocks to good English. So, here is a question for you: How confident are you that you know when to add an "s" or "es" to the end of a verb?

We know that nouns are made plural by adding an "s", as in "cat" and "cats", for example. However, verb plurals are formed by removing the "s", as in "he writes" and "they write". This can be a little confusing as we are accustomed to thinking that, in English, an "s" at the end of a word denotes the plural.

So, in our earlier example, "he writes" is the singular of the verb whereas "they write" is the plural. Note that this concerns only the present tenses of verbs, not the past simple tense ("he wrote, they wrote", etc). Note also that although the pronoun "I" is singular, you use the verb without an "s", as in "I write, I walk, I talk, I need", etc. This is yet another of the English language's many irregularities! The basic rule is verbs in the third person - he, she and it - should be suffixed with an "s".

Let's go a little further and see how we structure sentences when we have a number of subjects and verbs and need to work out whether the verbs should be singular or plural. Here are two examples:

Example 1: If he or she want/wants to talk to me, I will be in my office.

Example 2: The job advertised on the agency website grabbed my attention because my education, work experience and training perfectly match/matches its requirements.

In example 1, he and she are the subjects. However, they are connected by the conjunction "or", so we need to use the singular verb "wants":

If he or she wants to talk to me, I will be in my office

If the conjunction "and" had been used instead, we would use the plural "want" instead.

Example 2 is a little more complex as it has two sets of subjects and verbs. The first subject and verb is "job" and "grabbed" and the second set of subjects is "education, experience" and "training", which is plural. Note that the conjunction "and" is used. Therefore, we must use the plural form of the verb, which is "match":

The job advertised on the agency website grabbed my attention because my education, work experience and training perfectly match its requirements.

KJ Hutchings is the founder of KJ Language Services, offering editing, writing and proofreading services and advice on how you can make your English language documents the very best they can be. For more information, visit http://www.kjlanguageservices.com/