Have you ever noticed something strange about sentences involving prices or distances?

Do you ever wonder why Americans use expressions like "$50 is too much!" or "Ten miles is really far"?

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In today's Everyday Grammar, we will explore unusual cases of what we call subject-verb agreement.

We will look at sentences in which English speakers use plural nouns and noun phrases with singular verbs. These nouns and noun phrases often involve things such as time, money, distance or mathematics.

Let's begin with a few definitions.

Definitions

The term subject-verb agreement means that the subject and the verb agree in number. So a singular noun takes a singular verb. Here is an example:

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