Subject-Verb Agreement with Percentages and Fractions
5 exercises — practise agreement with percentage and fraction subjects in technical metrics reporting.
0 / 5 completed
1 / 5
Choose the sentence with correct subject-verb agreement.
"Fifty percent of the requests are timing out" is correct: with percentage subjects, the verb agrees with the noun after "of" — here the plural "requests" takes the plural verb "are". Option B incorrectly uses the singular "is" with the plural "requests". Option C uses the singular "request", which does not match the meaning of a percentage of many requests, and pairs it inconsistently with a plural verb. Option D is a garbled, doubled construction that is not a coherent sentence.
2 / 5
Which sentence correctly applies subject-verb agreement with a percentage of an uncountable noun?
"Ten percent of the bandwidth is reserved for monitoring traffic" is correct: "bandwidth" is uncountable, so it takes the singular verb "is", regardless of the percentage value. Option B incorrectly uses the plural "are" with the uncountable, singular-agreeing "bandwidth". Option C pluralizes "bandwidths", which is not standard usage for this mass noun in this sense, and mismatches it with a singular verb. Option D drops the article and uses a plural verb, which is inconsistent with the uncountable noun.
3 / 5
Select the sentence with correct agreement in a QA report describing test coverage.
"A third of the test cases still fail on the staging environment" is correct: the fraction "a third of" takes its agreement from the plural noun "test cases", so the plural verb "fail" is required. Option B incorrectly uses the singular "fails" with a plural noun. Option C uses the singular "test case" but keeps a plural verb, an inconsistent combination. Option D omits the finite auxiliary needed for a complete verb phrase, leaving an incomplete sentence.
4 / 5
Which sentence correctly applies agreement when the percentage refers to an uncountable abstract noun?
"Only twenty percent of the feedback was actionable" is correct: "feedback" is uncountable, so it takes the singular verb "was", matching the noun after "of" rather than the numeral. Option B uses the plural "were", which mismatches the uncountable "feedback". Option C incorrectly pluralizes "feedback" as "feedbacks", which is nonstandard, and keeps a singular verb inconsistently paired with a plural-looking noun. Option D drops the article and uses a plural verb, both inconsistent with the uncountable noun.
5 / 5
Choose the sentence with correct subject-verb agreement in an incident summary.
"Nearly ninety percent of the servers were affected by the outage" is correct: the plural noun "servers" after "of" determines plural agreement, so "were" is required. Option B incorrectly uses the singular "was" with a plural noun. Option C uses the singular "server", which contradicts the meaning of "ninety percent of" many servers, and mismatches it with a plural verb. Option D uses a non-finite "being affected" with no finite auxiliary, leaving the sentence incomplete.