Question

Fill in the blank with the correct auxiliary verb form the choices given.
Beauty and brain _______ not often go together.
a. have
b. are
c. do
d. does

Answer 1

Hint: The words ‘do’ and ‘does’ are used to answer the yes or no questions, such as “Do the students get enough of physical activity at school?” “Does she know anything about what happened to her family?”
Does is used with third person singular (he, she, it) while the word do is used with first person, second person as well as third person plural forms. Here, the sentence contains the subject in the third person plural form. This determines the word to be filled in the blank.

Complete solution:
The sentence is in third person plural form.
Now, looking at the options given above,
a. Have: this is often used with perfect tense (have done, have got). This is inappropriate for the sentence given.
b. Are: it is used for plural forms but the question is a yes or no question, hence the word is invalid.
c. Do: Since the sentence is in third person plural, “do” is the right word to fill the blank in the sentence given.
d. Does: it is used for the singular form of the third person. Hence, the word is not applicable to the sentence given in the question.

Hence, Option c, is the correct answer to the above question.

Note: The hesitation over “do” and “does” can be resolved by recapping the concept of where do and does is used.