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Matching nouns to verbs

English Language & Usage Asked on January 21, 2021

In this sentence:

We seek to provide a platform through social media and gallery showings that enhances the visibility of our members and the collective.

Shouldn’t it be “enhance” without the s?

One Answer

The sentence is somewhat ambiguous as written, but mainly because of how awkward it is to parse, which can lead to the wrong interpretation.

It's very likely that the intended subject of the sentence is a platform, making enhances be the required verb form.

There are different ways the sentence could be restructured that would make it easier to parse.


If the platform is the subject, which seems the most likely, it can be restructured in a couple of ways:

  • We seek to provide a platform that enhances the visibility of our members and the collective through social media and gallery showings.

  • Through social media and gallery showings, we seek to provide a platform that enhances the visibility of our members and the collective.

Either of these avoids the parsing issue of confusing the plurality of showings with the singular enhances.


On the other hand, if the subject actually was meant to be the showings, then it was written incorrectly.

In theory, it could be restructured like this:

Through social media and gallery showings that enhance the visibility of our members and the collective, we seek to provide a platform.

But even though this demonstrates the different subject and verb form, it ends in a way that's very awkward. It would require more wholesale changes than just reordering the words to make it sound normal.


There is an entirely different approach that would eliminate the issue altogether. This involves associating the verb with we rather than either noun:

We seek to enhance the visibility of our members and the collective by providing a platform of social media and gallery showings.

Answered by Jason Bassford on January 21, 2021

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