“The recent shootings in the Washington area,” said the good gray New York Times, “has left the region nearly numb with fear.”

Airlines are projecting huge losses for 2003, said the good gray Times, “and memories of how the first Persian Gulf war helped kill off Pan Am and Eastern Airlines only adds to the gloom.”

The shootings has left? Memories adds? What are going on here? The first rule of English composition may be simply stated: Subject and verb must agree in number. After that, it’s downhill all the way.

Last July the Times mused about the stock market. “The time when truck drivers wondered if they shouldn’t chuck it all for a career in day-trading ARE long gone.” Gracious! In a column urging an end to Amtrak, the Times’ Robert J. Samuelson acknowledged that highways and airlines are subsidized, but “the scale of the subsidies – measured per passenger – ARE much smaller.” Goodness! Another Times columnist last month observed that the war was not going well in Iraq: “Neither intense psychological operations nor precision missile strikes HAS toppled Saddam Hussein’s government.” Aaargh!

Such grammatical blunders get the old adrenals pumping. Does anyone diagram sentences any more? It is the neatest device ever invented for keeping subject and predicate properly hitched. An editorial is at hand from a newspaper in Georgia: “The line between safe and unsafe technologies are becoming too blurred to define.” If we dissect that sentence on a diagramming table, the bones at once appear – and the line IS becoming.

Not all the questions that arise under Rule No. 1 are so easily resolved. Often we must search for a subject, e.g., from Newsweek magazine, “Much of the hardware and software configurations needed to tease intelligible information from preserved disks and tapes are disappearing in the name of progress.” Pushing through the shrubbery, we discover that “much ARE disappearing.” Never mind all those plural disks, tapes and configurations. The verb is “is.”

A reporter for the Tacoma (Wash.) News Tribune racked up a hit and an error in the same lead sentence: “Nineteen years after the first of 49 victims WAS discovered, authorities in Seattle HAS arrested a man suspected of being the Green River Killer.” Nope. The “was” was singularly right, but the “has” was plurally wrong.

Rule No. 1 runs into problems with collective nouns. The Times’ Johnny Apple reported from Bermuda: “An enormous variety of wines ARE available on the island.” Another Times writer on food and drink had good news: “Thirty years of research HAS convinced many experts of the health benefits of moderate drinking for some people.” In the TV section, “The six hours of ‘Profiles’ PROVIDES a lingering look at the cultural divide …”

James Kilpatrick is a syndicated columnist.

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