A Word, Please: What’s before who makes all the difference

I saw a fascinating online grammar discussion recently that I was eager to write about in this column. But I can’t. It contained a bad word, by which I mean a great word — one of those anatomically specific insults that can make anyone the butt of a joke while simultaneously resonating with angry motorists and proctologists alike.

But here that word’s a no-no. So to cover up the offending term, leave it behind and wipe this column clean, I will replace the offending term with “jerks.”

Here’s the message board post in which the word “jerks” did not appear: “I’m one of those proper-grammar jerks who uses ‘literally’ correctly.” Another poster commented that this sentence itself was grammatically incorrect because the verb “uses” should be “use.”

The original poster fired back: “The verb ‘use’ is correct the way I used it, because the noun in that sentence is not ‘jerks,’ it is ‘one.’ The phrase ‘of those proper-grammar jerks’ is a prepositional phrase.”

To back up his claim, he posted this excerpt from a grammar website: “The noun at the end of a prepositional phrase will never be the subject of a verb. For example: ‘A list of factors are at play.’ Here, the subject is not factors. It is list. Therefore, the verb should be singular in number.”

Nope.

The original poster was wrong for two reasons. First, the grammar website he cited had its facts wrong. Second and more important, the real issue has nothing to do with the prepositional phrase. It has to do with the word “who.”

Let’s tackle the prepositional phrase stuff first. It’s a common belief that when you have a singular noun like “flock” followed by the preposition “of,” followed by a plural noun like “seagulls,” the verb that follows should be singular because it’s governed by the first of those two nouns.

According to this view, it’s correct to say “a flock of seagulls is overhead” but wrong to say “a flock of seagulls are overhead.”

That’s not true. Either noun can get a verb. If it makes more sense to say that the plural noun is the subject of the verb, as in “A flock of seagulls are fighting among themselves,” the plural verb is fine, regardless of whether it’s part of a prepositional phrase or the head of the whole noun phrase.

What’s more, according to that website, you couldn’t say, “A whole bunch of people are congregating outside.” You’d have to say, “A whole bunch of people is congregating outside.” Obviously, that’s wrong.

Again, that’s not why the original sentence was ungrammatical. In our original sentence, the subject of the verb was neither “one” nor “jerks,” it was “who.”

“Who” always agrees in number with its antecedent. Compare “the men who are assigned to the job” with “the man who is assigned to the job.” The subject of the verb in both cases is “who,” yet it changes depending on whether its antecedent is plural or singular.

Had our original message board user written “one of those jerks use” or “one of those jerks uses,” then we might have a discussion about whether the verb must agree with “one” or “jerks.” (Though our “whole bunch of people” example would put a quick end to that discussion.)

But that’s not what he wrote. He wrote “one of those jerks who uses.” That “who” makes all the difference because it’s the only possible subject of the verb. “Who” is treated as singular or plural depending on whether its antecedent — the word before it and to which it refers — is singular or plural. So the sentence was about “jerks who use.” “Who” is plural because “jerks” is plural.

So the original poster should have written “I’m one of those proper-grammar jerks who use ‘literally’ correctly,” not “uses.” Or better yet, he should stop being a jerk, lest he become the butt of more columns.

JUNE CASAGRANDE is the author of “The Best Punctuation Book, Period.” She can be reached at JuneTCN@aol.com.