Hey everyone! I just signed up and hope that I'm posting in the right forum for this question. I am editing a novel I wrote, and a friend pointed several sentences out to me where he thought I was using the incorrect word, in some cases "was" and in others "were".
I just used was in the above sentence btw I don't know a lot about grammar, but I was doing some research and found these guidelines:
Use 'was' if you are thinking of something as a unit, as a group.
Use 'were' if you are thinking of something as several individuals.
So I have the following sentences and hope you can all correct them for me. I am including the entire senteces:
"It was very idealistic and simpleminded teachings, of course, yet as a society, it was an absolutely true credos."
"The jammed sword was excruciatingly painful, but it was the wounds on his back that was killing him."
"Whatever troubles they had encountered the night before was now in the past."
"It wasn't lush, green summertime plante either, but rather brown-hued bushes and shrubs, wet-looking yet dry to the touch."
"It was all random acts, they concluded, having nothing more plausible to attribute it to."
Are the above right? They are to me, bearing the rule-of-thumb in mind..
I do feel that the final "was" in the second sentence should be a "were", but the rest sound right to me. Again, I know very little about grammar I'm afraid, which is why I try and find rules of thumb like the one I mentioned in the beginning of this post.
I just used was in the above sentence btw I don't know a lot about grammar, but I was doing some research and found these guidelines:
Use 'was' if you are thinking of something as a unit, as a group.
Use 'were' if you are thinking of something as several individuals.
So I have the following sentences and hope you can all correct them for me. I am including the entire senteces:
"It was very idealistic and simpleminded teachings, of course, yet as a society, it was an absolutely true credos."
"The jammed sword was excruciatingly painful, but it was the wounds on his back that was killing him."
"Whatever troubles they had encountered the night before was now in the past."
"It wasn't lush, green summertime plante either, but rather brown-hued bushes and shrubs, wet-looking yet dry to the touch."
"It was all random acts, they concluded, having nothing more plausible to attribute it to."
Are the above right? They are to me, bearing the rule-of-thumb in mind..
I do feel that the final "was" in the second sentence should be a "were", but the rest sound right to me. Again, I know very little about grammar I'm afraid, which is why I try and find rules of thumb like the one I mentioned in the beginning of this post.
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