S-V Agreement: Has vs Have

This post is going to be the first is a group of related posts dealing with subject-verb agreement. I will be placing "s-v agreement" on all posts connected to it to make it easier for you to find all entries on this topic. This is an extensive part of English and one that confuses many (myself included) so I will be dealing with it one entry at a time.

We all know the basic s-v agreement rule: if you have a single subject, you use a single verb. If you have multiple subjects, you use a plural verb. This is confusing because there are many roads leading from this rule. Let's start with the use of has and have.

I've been hearing people say "he have a good collection of movies" or "she have a hard time with Math." Clearly, these expressions are wrong. Have is the plural form of the verb has as such: "they have a good collection," "she has a hard time with Math."

S-V rules are confusing, which is probably why many make mistakes here. If you noticed, earlier, I posted "you have." We do not say "you has." Where subjects and verbs are concerned, it's best to memorize the rules.