Shouldn't it be "are" instead?

English as a Second Language English Vocabulary, Grammar and Idioms
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The correct verb to use in this sentence is “are.”

Shouldn’t it be “are”. instead?

Thanks.

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I’d like to answer, but what sentence are you talking about?

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3

Do you mean the underlined ‘is’?

The correct verb to use in this sentence is ‘is’.

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Now, I see. Why is it indeed ‘is’? Because the subject of your sentence is singular; The correct verb You need SV-concord. Subject-verb concord, used in practically every language I’ve mastered. I don’t know about Chinese, though. Colour me Greek. At least, now you know why it is singular. Oh and ‘colour me Greek’ is a jocular or pleasant way of saying you don’t understand something. In this case, I don’t understand Chinese.

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I think it’s much simpler than this.

I believe @Kohyoongliat is asking if the period after the word are should be outside the quotes. I would say yes since the word in quotes is not a direct quote, but just referring to a word as a word. Alternatively, the word are could just be italicized.

Unfortunately, this is a grammar question about a sentence that is a grammar statement. The response is difficult to write as I’m using grammar to respond with a grammar answer to a grammar question about a grammar statement.

So far I’ve had to edit this twice to revise my response.
Now it’s three edits.
Now four edits.

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Which sentence, @Kohyoongliat?

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I must agree, Lawrence, that the question is very unclear.

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You’re quite right, but you don’t really get an idea about what Kohyoongliat wants to know. I could almost suspect that someone who knew beforehand what is was, would be on it like a dart with the right answer. Ofcourse, that’s merely an assumption and I’m not really very good at guessing.

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Sorry for the confusion.

What I was asking is can “are.” be punctuated as “are”. ? (I am referring to the two are’s.) I hope it is clear now what I am talking about.

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10

The period belongs outside the quotation marks.

The correct verb to use in this sentence is “are”.

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Don’t worry, it is outside the quotation marks as I can see.

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But it is clear with reference to the nature of questions most usually asked by @Kohyoongliat.
He is a man more of punctuations than of grammar.
So, as already detected and answered by other members, the period should be placed at the end (after the inverted commas).

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Well, Lawrence, that has almost become a truism. :grinning:

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