Which is correct? 'Below are a series of links for additional information.' OR 'Below is a series of links for additional information.' Would you use 'come' or 'comes' in this sentence? "As her five years of service come(s) to an end, ..." Thanks, Mike
Series is singular in this case, so you would use "is." In the second example, "of service" is a prepositional phrase, so "five years" is the phrase that determines whether you would use the singular or plural form. In this case, you would use "come." Interestingly enough, "years of service comes to an end" has more hits on Google than "years of service come to an end."
I think I read somewhere where units of time can sometimes be treated as a singular item even though there are multiples of a unit involved. For example, "I have less than three hours to finish this report" instead of "I have fewer than...". It's been a while since I came across that, and I might be misremembering,....hrm. I think I saw it in the Chicago Manual of Style. I'll see if I can dig it up.
Haha, I just reread my response. I must have written this late. Little sleep. I'm glad it made sense, but I'll still dig up that source. Are we allowed to copy a couple paragraphs of books for educational purposes on this or any site? If not, I'll paraphrase or pass along the book name and section.
