Dear RB:

You wrote:

Dear Englishplus.com

I work for this Management Company in FL and my boss wrote a report which contains the following sentence:
“However, saying you have teams of 8’s, 9’s and 10’s and really having them is what sets A apart from other companies. ”
I think the verb is in the sentence is wrong it should be plural are. His partner who is an English Major and president of a major corporation also agrees with him. I think they are both wrong. I told him that sentences with plural subject must have a plural verb but he doesn’t agree with me. He says “saying” and “really having” requires a singular verb.

In my opinion the sentence should read:
“However, saying you have teams of 8’s, 9’s and 10’s and really having them are what sets A apart from other companies.”
What is the correct verb to use?

This is a good question and a bit of a tricky one. In modern American English both can be correct. The problem is that the predicate nominative is singular, in this case “what.” In English when we have a singular predicate nominative with a plural subject, a lot times we do make the verb singular. That has become common usage especially if you want to emphasize that the two items in the subject belong together. Note that people say “2 and 2 is four” just as much as they say “2 and 2 are four.”

However, you are in the most technical sense more precise because the subject is plural. If you want to emphasize the two parts to the subject, say “both saying and having.” Then the subject is unambiguously made up of two parts and the verb “are” should be used. However, you can just as easily reverse the order of the subject and predicate nominative and say “what sets us apart is saying and having.” In that case the verb “is” makes sense.

There is also another factor. Who is your audience?

If you are writing to an American audience, “is” should work fine, though there is nothing wrong with “are” here. However, if your audience is international and includes people from the UK, Ireland, or Commonwealth countries like India, then you should use “are.” This is understandable to Americans (just as “2 plus 2 are four” is) and follows the British practice using plurals with collective expressions. (Remember, in England they say “the government are.”)

I hope this helps.