Q. Is the following sentence correct? “Do the speaker or the characters have any specific personality traits that are highlighted throughout the poem?” According to CMOS 5.143, “When a verb has two or more subjects connected by or or nor, the verb agrees with the last-named subject” (e.g., “Bob or his friends have your key”; “neither the twins nor Jon is prepared to leave”). Based on that, it seems like it would be correct. “Characters” is closest to the verb, so that part is correct. I’m wondering if the auxiliary verb should match the verb or the subject closest to it? “Do the speaker or the characters have . . .” “Does the speaker or the characters have . . .” I’m probably overthinking this, but I can’t find any definitive answers when it comes to questions with compound subjects—one singular and one plural—joined by “or.” Could you point me to a rule that might address this? Thank you for your help.
A. We haven’t been able to find anything definitive either. So let’s try to invent something—we can call it the inverted-proximity rule—by adding on to the current wording in CMOS 5.143 (the new part is underlined):
When a verb has two or more subjects connected by or or nor, the verb agrees with the last-named subject; however, in a question that begins with an auxiliary verb, the auxiliary usually agrees with the first-named subject.
Here’s what that would look like relative to your example, starting with each subject used alone (and shortening your original predicate to make the examples easier to digest):
Does the speaker have any faults?
Do the characters have any faults?
Does the speaker or the characters have any faults?
That last example, where the auxiliary “Does” agrees with the subject “speaker,” seems to work well enough. But so does “Do the speaker or the characters have . . .” The problem with any rule based on a subject’s proximity to the verb is that a singular and a plural subject joined by or will tend to read as plural regardless of the order of subjects.
The remedy for questions, when you don’t like the result, is to put the plural subject first: “Do the characters or the speaker have any faults?” That fix can work for statements also: “Either Bob or his friends have your key” seems to work slightly better than “Either Bob’s friends or Bob has your key.”
In sum, for a plural and a singular subject joined by or (or nor), apply the proximity rule as stated above; if the result seems awkward, try switching the order of subjects.