There is a number of things that writers find confusing
Depending on which side of the fence you stand on, the headline of this post could make you uncomfortable. You might even be confused. That’s because indefinite quantifiers aren’t as easy to grasp as the may seem.
TL;DR
‘There is a growing number’ is a problematic phrase that’s popping up more and more frequently of late. I ran across it most recently in a Forbes article about women’s empowerment (another problematic phrase, but I’ll get to that in a separate post). The sentence went like this: “There is a growing number of impact funds that allow investors to power social and economic change by advancing women globally.”
The use of the singular verb “is” with the plural “impact funds” was quite jarring. So much so that I left the article immediately to investigate whether ‘is’ or ‘are’ would be the correct verb to use in this context. And, boy, was I in for a treat.
As usual, word nerds are divided on the topic.
The division is mainly along the lines of what you consider to be the subject of the sentence. Some believe that ‘a growing number’ is singular and part of the noun phrase, and should therefore have a singular verb. Others feel that the subject of the sentence (“impact funds”) is plural and the verb should agree with it in number.
So there are two main issues here:
- If it’s acceptable to use a singular verb when the noun following it is a plural
- Whether ‘a number’ is singular or plural
Is it is or is it are?
The first issue above can be addressed with one word: no. There must always be subject-verb agreement. Like things always go together. For example:
Singular
- There is an egg on the table (singular verb, singular subject)
not - There are an egg on the table (plural verb, singular subject)
Plural
- There are eggs on the table (plural verb, plural subject)
not - There is eggs on the table (singular verb, plural subject)
The second is more hotly debated. And none of the authorities (Oxford, Cambridge and the like) give any guidance as to whether the phrase is singular or plural.
‘A number’ is ultimately an indefinite quantifier or quantitative adjective (it’s used before a noun to answer the question ‘How much?’). Whether it forms part of the noun phrase or not doesn’t change this.
The quantifier modifies the noun, and the form of the noun determines which verb should be used. So the most important thing to do is to find the subject of the sentence, establish whether it’s singular or plural and use the appropriate verb.
If you’re still having problems, you can use this handy trick to figure out whether to use a singular or plural verb: Replace the ‘is’ or ‘are’ in your sentence with a different verb of the same number and see how it sounds.
From our earlier example (altered slightly to suit this construction):
- A growing number impact funds allows investors …
- A growing number of impact funds allow investors …
If you read these sentences aloud, it should be immediately apparent that the plural “impact funds” followed by the singular verb sounds odd. Which is, ultimately, what matters most.
TL;DR
- There aren’t any hard and fast rules about whether indefinite quantifiers (e.g. a growing number of) are singular or plural; it’s all about context
- Replace the verb relating to the indefinite quantifier with another verb of the same number to see if the sentence still makes sense, for example:
There is a growing number of students graduating after four years.
Singular: A growing number of students graduates after four years.
Plural: A growing number of students graduate after four years.
