writing question

[shaqtus]

<p>The number of awards given [this year] to biochemists [accentuate] the [significant gains] being [made in] the study of the chemistry of living organisms.</p>

<p>the error is in "accentuate" - can someone explain why?</p>

[silverturtle]

<p>The subject of the sentence is “number,” which is singular. Intervening prepositional phrases do not affect subject-verb agreement.</p>

[silverturtle]

<p>Here is a post I made on this (from <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/sat-preparation/852992-writing-questions.html?highlight=intervening+prepositional#post1063965164):%5B/url%5D”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/sat-preparation/852992-writing-questions.html?highlight=intervening+prepositional#post1063965164):</a></p>

<p>

The subject of a sentence is never in an intervening prepositional phrase, which are exampled below in italics (simple subject and simple predicate are in bold):</p>

<p>“One of the horses is tall.” </p>

<p>“Is each of you ready?”</p>

<p>“Neither of the guys is able to bring his llama to the party; it’s lame.” </p>

<p>The information in the intervening prepositional phrase has no grammatical effect on the rest of the sentence.</p>

<p>“each of these structures was the tallest in the world at the time it was built.” “each” is singular; there are no exceptions to this.

</p>