is or are?
Q. In the sentence: "If 15 liters of juice is divided
between three people........" Is it correct to say ".....liters of juice IS" or
"ARE"? Also, how about: " There are 5 liters of oil in a container." - Should it
be ARE or IS, and are the above sentences different in any way? I am really
confused about this!
A.
Both of these should be ARE. The subject of each sentence
is LITERS, which is a plural. OF JUICE and OF OIL are prepositional phrases. The
verb should agree with the subject, not the object of the preposition.
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