Verb agreement after "as well as"

Google turns up examples of both singular and plural verbs with subjects like "every X, as well as many Y,". Here are some examples:

• And just about every garage band and folk group, as well as many church choirs, has worked up versions as well.
• Virtually every nurse and every adjustment counselor in our system, as well as many teachers and administrators, have been trained in CMT procedures
• it has always been quick to realise this, and every great scientific generalisation–as well as many smaller ones, has been resisted
• Almost every library with a genealogical collection, as well as many university libraries, have ...
• Britain has 19491 miles of coastline at high tide, and every mile of it, as well as many miles beyond, is guarded
• every conceivable necessity as well as many luxuries are there
• Every form of suffering and anguish, as well as many joys and triumphs, is shared with us
• and nearly every cell organelle as well as many cytoskeletal proteins are targets of pronounced fragmentation

Plural seems to be more common. What are the pedantic arguments in favour of either way?

The subordinate clause (listing additional people or things) should not affect the grammar of the main clause. Therefore if the noun in the main clause is singular (every garage band, every nurse, every ... generalisation, etc) then the verb takes a singular form too. Surely? The subordinate clauses are just providing a distraction. IMHO.

It's a common error because the noun in the subordinate clause is closer to the verb but it's still in error. When in doubt read the sentence without the subordinate clause and see how it sounds.

I think the real answer is not to get into that mess in the first place. There are at least three good ways to express the same idea without puzzling the reader or provoking stack overflow:

(i)And nearly all garage bands and folk groups, as well as many church choirs, have worked up versions as well.
(ii)Virtually every nurse and every adjustment counselor in our system has been trained in CMT procedures. Many teachers and administrators have had the training too.
(iii)it has always been quick to realise this, and every great scientific generalisation has been resisted, as well as many smaller ones

(I don't think the third example ever meant anything in the first place...)

#4, @thorold: "(I don't think the third example ever meant anything in the first place...)"

The meaning was clear enough in context before I cut out all but the bit relevant to my question, but I think it is a good example of poor use of passive voice. Better would have been (giving a bit more context): "to do the religious world justice it has always been quick to realise this, and has resisted every great scientific generalisation as well as many smaller ones, on the ground that they were atheistic in character". (http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25291.txt.utf8) (This example has nothing to do with my antireligious bias — it's just what my Google search threw up.)

Is it really a subordinate clause? It doesn't constrain or describe anything else in the sentence. It just adds to the subject. "As well as" seems equivalent to "and" in all of these examples, which would make the plural correct.

I think "as well as..." is not a clause. I think that it may be either parenthetical or not parenthetical. When it is parenthetical, enclosed in commas, the verb agreement should be with the subject before it. When it is not parenthetical verb agreement should be with the compound subject. When it is difficult the sentence should be recast.

Robert

>5 jimroberts: You're right - there's no good reason for using the passive there. Mr Chapman Cohen appears to have been a contemporary of Fowler...

>6 Amtep:
...who glosses "as well as" as equivalent to "besides", and doesn't seem to have anything to say about this particular construction.

7> but this usage doesn't read as parenthetical with commas; I'd go with

"Virtually every nurse and every adjustment counselor in our system, as well as many teachers and administrators, have been trained in CMT procedures."

but

"Virtually every nurse and every adjustment counselor in our system—as well as many teachers and administrators—has been trained in CMT procedures." (or with parentheses)

I think that the verb should be plural when it applies to two things linked by the conjunction "and" or "as well as":
"Every garage band and folk group have..."
"Every nurse and every adjustment counselor have..."
"Every nurse and every adjustment counselor as well as many teachers... have"

On the other hand, I would use a singular verb after "or"
"Every nurse or every adjustment counselor has..."

I do not have a pedantic argument for this, just my gut feeling.

>10 overthemoon:
I don't think so: if you put
"Every nurse and every adjustment counselor have..."
next to
"The nurse and the adjustment counselor have..."

the first one sounds wrong but the second one sounds right: I think the "every" must have a bigger influence on the number of the verb than the "and" does.

"As well as" and "and" aren't entirely interchangeable. I'm trying to think of a sentence that has a verb and still uses "as well as" as a conjunction.

"Bob as well as John live in New York"? "John went to the store as well as visited his mother"? There's something off here. In many cases "as well as" seems better as a preposition.

>10 overthemoon:

It may sound OK with have, but try this one (dimly recalled from Gilbert and Sullivan):

"Every boy and every gal
that comes into this world alive
IS either a little Liberal
or else a little Conservative."

To put "are" instead of "is" would, I hope, sound wrong to you.

>2 dtw42:

Exactly. It is an instance of attraction, which causes a verb to agree incorrectly with the nearest noun.

Is pedantry coextensive with prescriptivism? (I favor allowing attraction. I mean Greek authors do it all the time, and they wrote some of the best English out there.)

>14 timspalding: Yeah, I think they're pretty much co-extensive.

You also favour the phrase "and etc.". Ick!

The hoi polloi?

>16 timspalding: Yeah, I try to avoid that one. It manages to be grammatically absurd and pretentious at the same time.

You're also against the algorithm and the Alhambra too, right? ;)

>18 timspalding: I actually don't object to algorithm. It's come far enough from its origins to have taken on a completely different meaning, and I'd consider it fully English at this point. Also, there isn't really an alternative. Algorithm is the simple word, not some fancy alternative.

I don't normally speak about Alhambra, but I suppose I would leave out the article.

Re Alhambra: Um, and the b. Where did that come from?

12> I think "as well as" sounds weird in those instances because it's used when you already have the "and" conjunction. "John and Bob as well as Rob lived there." or "He went to the store and park as well as the pier."

It seems that "as well as" might be used for "this is also something to note, but it's not the focus of our discussion, or it's already been mentioned". I'm not sure how to explain the gut feeling I have about it.

>14 timspalding:
No - the real joy of pedantry is that you can be obnoxious without being tied down by any consistent theoretical model. Even Fowler was only a prescriptivist when it suited him. He was quite happy to tick people off for slavishly following imaginary rules at other times. I'm sure there's a good case for attraction in English.

>13 MyopicBookworm:,16
If we're taking Iolanthe as our paradigm, we have to allow "The hoi polloi / (a Greek remark)"

I think that when the article is disguised, either because it's foreign or it's buried inside an initialism, that it's fine to use an article with it.

The CMS (what we use for style questions at work) categorizes "as well as" as a subordinating conjunction.

"Subordinating conjunctions or conjunctive phrases often denote the following relationships: (1) Comparison or degree (2) Time (3) Condition or assumption (4) Reason or concession (5) Purpose or result (6) Place (7) Manner (8) Appositions (9) Indirect questions"

When I am editing, though, I am always on the look-out for needless wordiness. "As well as" is an easy one to search on and eliminate for a more streamlined statement, as thorold has already mentioned. We replace with "and" as much as possible.

(I favor allowing attraction. I mean Greek authors do it all the time, and they wrote some of the best English out there.)

Funny you should say that. Just yesterday I came across a reference to "The Histories, translated into English by Herodotus"...

>10 overthemoon:, 11 etc.
I thought about this again walking home.
I would say, for example,
Every man and every woman who live on this street are outside washing their windows.
But if I change that and use "as well as", I get into hot water
Every man who lives on this street, as well as every woman, is outside washing his windows.
... is outside washing his or her windows
... is outside washing their windows
Ack.

To get back to the examples cited in >1 jimroberts:, I would correct some of them as follows
•And just about every garage band and folk group, as well as many church choirs, have worked up versions as well.
plural to go with garage band AND folk group
•Almost every library with a genealogical collection, as well as many university libraries, has...
•every conceivable necessity, as well as many luxuries, is there
•and nearly every cell organelle, as well as many cytoskeletal proteins, is the target of pronounced fragmentation

I just added commas round the "as well as" phrase to separate it from the subject(s) and verb.

Everyone who lives on this street is outside washing their windows.

No gender specifics needed. And no hot water. ;-)

#27, @overthemoon: "plural to go with garage band AND folk group"

This doesn't seem consistent with your decisions in the other examples. How is "garage band AND folk group" more plural than "many university libraries", "many luxuries" and "many cytoskeletal proteins".

Have any of you tried to find on-line examples with verbs other than be and have?

>28 VenusofUrbino:: is + their? Hmm, some people might start to twitch. Why not "All the people {or "All the men and women"} who live on this street are outside washing their windows"? Then we have plural all the way through and no awkwardnesses! :^)

is + their? Hmm, some people might start to twitch.

Send them to google for "singular they"...

But the easiest solution in this case is just to drop it altogether: "everyone who lives on this street is outside washing windows" :)

#31 "is + their? Hmm, some people might start to twitch."

Not Jesus, Shakespeare or Jane Austin though, to name but a few.

Didn't know Jesus spoke English. :^D

I think Fowler was grinding his teeth, but his successor Burchfield seemed more "meh, whatever..."

#34dtw42 "Didn't know Jesus spoke English. :^D"

Then Tyndale must have put the words into his mouth.

>33 jimroberts: You're brave to use "Jane Austin" in the pedants' group...

Ha, well spotted!

#36 Larxol "You're brave to use "Jane Austin" in the pedants' group..."

I'm also deeply ashamed :(

>38 jimroberts:
I've always thought it would have been much more fitting if the future Mrs Wm. Morris had been born an Austin.

>39 thorold: And their lovely daughter, Minnie.

>40 Larxol:

I wonder what the market is for a car for which there's only one Driver?