LEO: Literacy Education Online Identifying Verbs and Their Subjects

When you are trying to proofread your writing for clear, accurate, and correctly punctuated sentences, it is a big help to be able to spot verbs and their subjects. These quick hints will help you find the verbs and the subjects of your sentences.

Hints to identify verbs

• Verbs are words that will make sense if they are inserted in one of these blanks.

  I _______.     You _______ .     He _____.     It ______.

  Only verbs make sense after personal references: I, you, he, she, it, we, they; other words don't. Study the following examples of verbs and other parts of speech.

  Verbs		Other Parts of Speech
  I see	He walks	I with	He book
  You feel	It is	You carefully	It desk

• Sometimes, you may find two or more words in your sentence that can be verbs because they fit in the blanks above. For example,
  The lost document was part of the legacy.

  In this case, both lost and was fit in the blanks above. To figure out which one of the two is the verb, change the verb tense of the sentence, and see which word changes; the one that changes is the verb of the sentence.

  Past	Present
  The lost document was part of the legacy.	The lost document is part of the legacy.

  To change "The lost document was part of the legacy" to the present tense, I must write "The lost document is part of the legacy." Since lost stays the same but was changes to is, I know that was is the verb in the original sentence.

• In order to distinguish the subject of your sentence, ask "Who?" or "What?" in front of the verb. The following examples illustrate this strategy.

  Example	Question for the subject	Answer
  The theory stated by the German astronauts amazed the government.	What amazed the government?	the theory stated by the German astronauts
  The acid spilled in the laboratory caused a delay in the investigation.	What caused a delay in the investigation?	the acid spilled in the laboratory
  The assistant manager at the store filed a lawsuit against the company for age discrimination.	Who filed a lawsuit against the company for age discrimination?	the assistant manager

  Remember that sometimes the subject comes after the verb, but it still will answer "Who?" or "What?"

• The subject of your sentence will agree in number with the verb; in other words, a singular subject requires a singular verb, and a plural subject requires a plural verb:
  The article reports an increasing rate of citizens who vote in the national elections.

  The articles report an increasing rate of citizens who vote in the national elections.

  The subject of the sentence will be transformed to its pronoun form when forming the tag question. Tag questions are short questions added at the end of a sentence when the speaker seeks confirmation of his/her statement.

  The nurse administered to him the right doses of morphine, didn't he?

  The nurses administered to him the right doses of morphine, didn't they?