<p>^
‘neither Caltech nor Stanford is to be considered a safety.’</p>
<p>correction: neither Caltech nor Stanford are to be considered a safety.</p>
<p>~The Grammar Nazi</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>No, the verb needs to be singular there. Read my grammar guide to see why (subject-verb agreement section).</p>
<p>Isn’t it a compound subject, so a plural verb form?</p>
<p>Ex: Eggs and toast are my two favorite foods.</p>
<p>Excerpt from the guide:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>This works in the same way for nor.</p>
<p>Moreover, your proposed “correction” also commits a logical agreement error because safety is singular whereas your verb is plural.</p>
<p>Oh, ok thanks a bunch!</p>
<p>Each, either, neither, all the bodies (somebody, anybody, nobody, etc.), all the ones (someone, anyone, noone, etc.), and all the things (something, nothing, anything, etc.) should take a singular verb.</p>
<p>:)</p>
<p>^ Mollie, those are indefinite pronouns. In my sentence, neither was instead being used as a correlative conjunction, so the rules that you described don’t apply there. For example:</p>
<p>Neither Bob nor his mothers are hungry. <a href=“conjunction”>i</a>*</p>
<p>Neither of them is hungry. <a href=“pronoun”>i</a>*</p>
<p>Oh, lord, sorry. It’s been a long day in grad-student-land.</p>
<p>Well, everybody can remember what I said in addition. :)</p>
<p>^ Yes, those guidelines are often helpful as well.</p>
<p>When I saw that someone was trying to correct silverturtle’s grammar, I laughed, because I knew it couldn’t be done. The self-proposed grammar Nazi just had to unilaterally surrender to the United States.</p>
<p>I used to be fairly hardcore about grammar, but then it went downhill after a few years in college.</p>