By Singular nouns, Plural subject

The first one, because -- actually, I'm not quite sure how to explain it. Well, a quick search on google for "thing after thing was" has about 100 results, while "thing after thing were" has none. Hmm. As I understand it, the only way to form a plural subject out of two singular nouns is to...

You must be googling in Mongolia, Jack -- I get a million and a half hits for 'cars are', and 900,000 for 'cars is'. The latter figure is explained by looking at the grammar of the hits: the subject of 'cars is' is not 'cars', but a singular noun earlier in the sentences. 'Cars is what I need'...

Hi, it's me, Ralf, the starter of this thread. Thanks for your answers so far. A post in another thread pointed me to the "American Heritage - Book of English Usage", where I found this section: According to the standard rule, when the pronoun there precedes a verb such as be, seem, or appear,...