is or are?

li cuizhi's picture

     we know exactly to to express this sentence"eight and five is thirteen", but some dictionaries express it to be like this"    eight and five are\make  thirteen". Are the dictionaries wrong? or it really has such ways to express?

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Comments

Zakumi's picture

Hi Li Cuizhi. Nice to see you here! Well, I know I won't qualify as the most clever teacher, but what I do know is that when you join one item to another one, using "and", you no more have one item, but two and therefore it should be in the plural (are, or were, depending on your tense)! So, I guess the dictionaries are correct (maybe they always are)! :)

li cuizhi's picture

Thanks ,Zakumi!