Grammar Girl here, I'm in Yon Fog Fog, your friendly guide to the English language.

We talk about writing, history, rules, and other cool stuff.

Today, we'll talk about why the pronoun I seems to take plural verbs

and how to make names that end in S possessive. A grammar girl follower named Aaron Heinz asked why do we use

plural forms of verbs with the singular subject I, for example, I go to the store.

When he talks about singular and plural, he's talking about what grammarians call

number, but the assumption that go is a plural form isn't

entirely correct. In addition to number, verb forms can also encode

tense and person. Here's a quick overview of the concept of grammatical person.

The first person singular pronouns are the forms of I, including me, my, mine, and myself.

First person plural pronouns are forms of we.

We go to the store.

Second person pronouns are the forms of you.

In present day English, we don't distinguish between singular and plural

for second-person pronouns except for the singular form yourself and plural

yourselves. You can refer to one person, you get the passenger seat, or many people.

Would you please form a line in front of the counter?

Third person singular pronouns are the forms of he, she, it, and more recently they.

And third person plural pronouns are also the forms of they.

Now let's look at the verb go and how it can give information about all three of these things, number, tense and person.

In the form goes, the S-ending tells us not only that it's in the present tense,

but also that its subject is third person singular.

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