A few days ago
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english help?

The empire state building, the sears tower, the canadian national tower, — each *of these structures* *was* the *tallest* in the world at the time *they were* built.

i believe the was should be changed to were, but my teacher refuses to believe that is wrong. ive asked several friends and they agree with me. can someone please explain how “they were” is wrong? and what would you change it to?

Top 10 Answers
A few days ago
Lilaki

Favorite Answer

http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/each.html

“Each” as a subject is always singular: think of it as equivalent to “every one.” The verb whose subject it is must also be singular. Some uses, like “to keep them from fighting, each dog has been given its own bowl,” cause no problem. No one is tempted to say “have been given.” But when a prepositional phrase with a plural object intervenes between subject and verb, we are likely to be misled into saying things like “Each of the children have to memorize their own locker combinations.” The subject is “each,” not “children.” The tendency to avoid specifying gender by using “their” adds to pressure toward plurality; but the correct version of this sentence is “Each of the children has to memorize his or her own locker combination.”

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A few days ago
Anonymous
Sorry, I’m afraid your teacher is right and it doesn’t really matter that you have friends who agree with you. These things are determined by the rules of grammar rather than whether a solution is popular :o)

The solution is in the “each”. Each is singular, it refers to the members of a group (in this case, tall buildings) one by one. Therefore, it has to be “was” (songular) rather that were (plural) and later “at the time that it was built”.

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A few days ago
Dreamweaver
“each *of these structures* *was* ” is correct, the ‘was’ was refering to

1)the empire state building

2)the sears tower

3)the canadian national tower,

individually, not all the 3 at the sametime, see the ‘each’ at the beginning of the phrase, try to say the phrase ‘each were….’

for the 2nd phrase ‘*they were*’ is also correct as there were no time frame involve,

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A few days ago
Anonymous
In the first half of the sentence you are discussing singluar form…each building was. In the second half of your original sentence you shift to plural form and use were. Work on making sure all parts of the sentence are in correct subject/verb agreement.

Chek out this website for information on subject/verb agreement: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/599/01/

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A few days ago
wigglesmom
at the time it was built.

when it says each of these…. it is not grouping the buildings….they are singled out.

say it out loud with just one building at a time…

i hope this helps you

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A few days ago
bumblebei18
“they were” should be “it was.” if you look at the sentence, the subject is “each,” which is singular, so the pronoun referring to the subject and the verb of the subject should be for a singular subject.
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A few days ago
sbhp_sam
Well, “was” should be “were” since there are three subjects. BUT, you used “each” so it must be was. Maybe, you should remove each, and use “they were”.
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A few days ago
?
each was.

Each is ALWAYS singular, Asker.

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A few days ago
Anonymous
was can be change as were. you can ….

change your each as both .

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A few days ago
Albert
was, because you use each… am i right? but i think it should be were because you use each…
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