Question

Fill in the blank with the correct form of the verb given in the bracket.
The manager as well as counter clerks _____ (try) to persuade him to go in for the ATM card.
a- tries
b- try
c- will have tried
d- trying

Answer 1

Hint: Subject-verb agreement must accord in number. Either both the subject and verb should be singular or both should be plural in number.

Complete answer:
 As given in the hint, we need to maintain the subject-verb agreement relationship in the above-given sentence.
For example- They have many pencils. Here, we have used the third person plural verb, ‘have’ with the third person plural pronoun, ‘they’ to form subject-verb agreement.
In the given question- We can see the use of ‘as well as’ with the subject, ‘manager’. Hence, the correct answer is; The manager as well as counter clerks tries to persuade him to go in for the ATM card.
Here, we have used ‘tries’ because ‘manager’ is a singular noun.
Now, let’s examine the given options-
Option a- ‘tries’ is the correct option because the first subject is singular in number.
Option b- ‘try’ is an incorrect option because it is used with plural subjects.
Option c- ‘will have tried’ is an incorrect option because it is grammatically incorrect.
Option d- ‘trying’ is an incorrect option because we cannot use a participle without an auxiliary verb. The correct answer is Option ‘a’.

Note:
 If two subjects have been joined with the help of ‘as well as’, the verb we use depends upon the number of the first subject. Also, keep in mind that the verb depends on the subject and not on the object.