Quote:
Originally Posted by rj1948  "A number of ..." usually requires a plural verb. In "A number
of employees were present", it's the employees who were present, not
the number. "A number of" is just a fuzzy quantifier. ("A number
of..." may need a singular in the much rarer contexts where it does
not function as a quantifier: "A number of this magnitude requires
5 bytes to store.")
On the other hand, "the number of..." always takes the singular:
"The number of employees who were present was small." Here, it's
the number that was small, not the employees.
Hope this helps!
Dawood
If your interpretation is correct ,why do you use 'were' in the above sentence? |
If my sentence confuses you, just omit the defining clause "who were present", then there will be no confusion.
Dawood