# Grammar question - was/were **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 8, 2021, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-question-was-were/930071 "2021-01-08T22:31:43Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2021, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-question-was-were/930071/21 "2021-01-09T18:47:53Z")
> [@EinsteinsHund](#): > > The predicate “were” refers to the subject “items”, Not quite. “Items” is not the subject. “There” is the subject. “Items” is the “predicate nominative,” which means it renames the subject. You can rename a singular subject with a plural predicate nominative, and you still use a single verb. Compare “I am many different people.” with “Many different people are the ‘typical voter.’” What I’m guessing you are trying to describe is that “There,” as the subject of a sentence, may be either singular or plural. Since it may take either kind of verb, we can look to the predicate nominative for the number of the verb. “There isn’t much time left.” “There aren’t many minutes left.” ---
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2021, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-question-was-were/930071/22 "2021-01-09T18:49:32Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > Gosh! I wish I could talk like that. I wish I knew how to multiquote in one post, but every time someone has tried to describe it for me, it just hasn’t clicked. ---
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2021, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-question-was-were/930071/23 "2021-01-09T18:54:37Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > A step in the right direction, but “that existed” is redundant and therefore unnecessary. I would say: “There were numerous deferred maintenance items when the previous tenants moved in”. Simple, tells the story. The end. How about "There were _already_ numerous deferred maintenance items when the previous tenants moved in.” Doesn’t that pretty much express the idea of them being extant, without introducing a second verb? ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2021, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-question-was-were/930071/24 "2021-01-09T19:28:16Z")
> [@RivkahChaya](#): > > > [@wolfpup](#): > > > > A step in the right direction, but “that existed” is redundant and therefore unnecessary. I would say: “There were numerous deferred maintenance items when the previous tenants moved in”. Simple, tells the story. The end. > > How about "There were _already_ numerous deferred maintenance items when the previous tenants moved in.” Doesn’t that pretty much express the idea of them being extant, without introducing a second verb? Yes, I think that reads well. Of course one could argue that “already” would be redundant in certain contexts, but it’s an excellent construction if one is trying to emphasize that the defects existed at the time the tenants moved in, which is the case here. > [@RivkahChaya](#): > > I wish I knew how to multiquote in one post, but every time someone has tried to describe it for me, it just hasn’t clicked. You’re probably overthinking whatever instructions you were given. All you do is highlight the part of the post you want to quote, and then click on the “Quote” popup box. You can do this repeatedly, on the same post, or on any number of different posts, and the quotes are repeatedly pasted into the reply box. You can also reposition the cursor in the reply box, so that the quotes get pasted in any place you want, instead of being added sequentially. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2021, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-question-was-were/930071/25 "2021-01-09T19:48:37Z")
Does your (or any) grammar-correction software show its analysis of flagged sentences so that you can understand its suggestions? btw I fail to grasp the exact “double subjunctive” rule. Can I not say something like, “I would have gone if I were interested” / “I would have gone were I interested”, the irrealis _were_ implying I was not interested? ---
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2021, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-question-was-were/930071/26 "2021-01-09T20:06:54Z")
> [@DPRK](#): > > btw I fail to grasp the exact “double subjunctive” rule. Can I not say something like, “I would have gone if I were interested” / “I would have gone were I interested”, the irrealis _were_ implying I was not interested? That “should” be-- “should” being relative, here-- are you a prescriptivist, or a descriptivist? “I had gone if I were interested,” believe it or not. The “unknown” situation (which is known in this case, because it’s in the past, but it was the thing you were waiting to know before you made a decision) is subjunctive, and the result is imperative. It sounds weird, because right now, no one says it that way. People actually say more often what you wrote, since you have the result and cause flipped in your sentence. I used to write papers back in the 1980s for an English professor who was born before Chaucer. Seriously-- the guy was born well before the Depression, and had his PhD before the Pearl Harbor attack. He used to go on about how terrible it was that English students didn’t have to study Old English anymore. Anyway, you bloody well had to get your grammar right for him, and that meant what a prescriptivist would say in 1935. If enough people say it long enough, the “double subjunctive” is going to become accepted usage, but I don’t think it’s there yet, and that’s what tripped up the grammar check, I’m guessing. However, do not ask me to defend that usage. I realize that it sounds archaic. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2021, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-question-was-were/930071/27 "2021-01-09T20:40:51Z")
> [@DPRK](#): > > Does your (or any) grammar-correction software show its analysis of flagged sentences so that you can understand its suggestions? The grammar “suggestions” that come from word processing software and the like are extremely basic and primitive. To do anything much more sophisticated would place an undue burden on software for an entirely tangential purpose. To provide a comprehensive parsing analysis would be completely unrealistic. There are online research programs that try to do that, and they’re very sophisticated AI in their own right, and far from perfect. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-question-was-were/930071.md?page=1)