1. He and his brother is twins.

2. Neither Jimmy Connors nor Ivan Lendl are going to win.

3. The attitude of the men are very hostile.

4. Anybody who goes to that party are silly.

5. Here is the tools.

Those sentences sound strange? They should. In each one the verb does not agree with the subject.

In sentence number 1, for instance, while "he" is singular, and "his brother" is singular, are joined by "and." This means we have two subjects (or a compound subject). The expression "He and his brother" refers to two people, and we don't say "Two is."

• He and his brother are twins.

A compound subject is plural. It therefore calls for a plural verb.

In sentence number 2, we don't have a compound subject because whenever we have two or more singular subjects connected by or, nor, but, a singular form of the verb is required.

• Jane or Bill is.
  
• Not Gary but John was.

There is one exception to this rule, and it is that if one of the subjects joined by or, nor, but, is singular and the other is plural, the verb agrees with the subject nearest to it. 

• Neither Lee nor the singers were there.
  
• Not only the baseball players but also their coach is for it.

In sentence number 3, notice that the plural verb "are" agrees with "men." The problem here is that "men is not the subject. "Attitude"is the subject, and so the sentence should read:

• The attitude of the men is very hostile.

Remember, when you have a question about whether the verb is correct, go back and isolate the subject of the sentence to be sure the verb agrees with it.

In sentence number 4, one of the most common subject-verb agreement problems occurs. The pronouns anybody, anyone, each, every, either, everybody, neither, no one, and somebody are singular, and therefore require singular verbs.

• Anybody who goes to that party is silly.
  
• Everyone in the room was quiet.

SUBJECT-VERB AGREEMENT

In sentence number 5, notice that the word "here," like the word "there" is never the subject. The subject follows. In this case, the subject is "tools," so we need a plural verb.

• Here are the tools.
  
• There is only one wrench.

It seems like there are a lot of rules for keeping the subject and verb in agreement. There are even more than we have listed here. But if you develop the habit of finding the correct subject of the sentence, you should have no trouble selecting the appropriate verb. 

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