Oh, It's On!

I am not a confrontational person. I rarely get in fights or arguments of any kind. Now, admittedly, this is not because of my sweet, pacifistic nature. It is because most of the time I don't care.

Well now I do.

SUBJECT VERB AGREEMENT PEOPLE!!!

Spending a week in hell (aka, Tar Heel Girl's State) really opened my ears to problems of this nature. At first I figured the problem stemmed from idiocy. I then scolded myself and decided that it must have to do with either poor education or linguistic backgrounds rooted in nonstandard English.

But then I spent a week with my family in Wisconsin.

AND THEY DO IT TOO! These are well educated affluent people! WHAT HAS THE WOLD COME TO!?!?

Now, in all fairness it isn't all the time. In fact, it is only one very specific situation. Maybe two, depending on how you look at it.

And that situation is as follows:

"There is" or "There's" followed by either a plural noun or a series.

It drives me mad.

I was explaining to one of my cousins how this was a pet peeve of mine and he asked me to give an example of a subject verb agreement mistake. I did and he look at me and asked, "That's incorrect?" I wanted to cry.

As the week went on I noticed that almost everyone around me made these mistakes at one point or another and I now have two additional theories as to why this mistake is so prevalent.

• With this particular construction the subject follows the verb so the speaker does not consider it when conjugating the verb. He/she speaks one word at a time instead of considering the sentence as a whole.
• We love contractions. "There's" is easy to say and rolls off the tongue with ease. "There are" on the other hand is awkward and difficult for some people to say without disrupting the natural flow of speech. I myself tend to say something closer to "Thererrr" when talking with family and friends.
  

I think what really put me over the edge on this particular issue was an article in the economist. I'm not even sure what it was about... Mugabe I think... some issue that made me angry to begin with. But what really got me fired up were 5 grammar errors I found, including one "There is/are" subject very agreement mistake.

So I have decided to declare war on the improper usage of "There is" and "There's".
I beseech thee, JOIN MY CAUSE! Whenever you hear someone make a "There is/are" mistake, please correct him/her!

Disclaimer: I know my grammar is not perfect, and I'm sure you could find plenty of mistakes made be me, but for the most part I think I do pretty well by the English language!

Also, I kind of wish that English had a neutered 3rd person singular article. I am always saying "they" when I know I should say "he or she" but I just can't help myself!