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A total of 10 payments were made.

OR

A total of 10 payments was made.

Which is correct? Or can both be correct?

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This looks like a potential duplicate of this discussion: english.stackexchange.com/questions/5378/… – WAF Nov 26 '10 at 16:18

3 Answers

up vote 7 down vote accepted

Since "payment" is countable, I would go with "were" to reinforce the notion that there was more than one payment.

This thread contains more examples:

Number, majority and total are singular if preceded by the, but plural if preceded by a.

  • A number of people believe he is innocent.
  • A majority of residents want the town to reduce the recreation fee.
  • A total of 15 people were arrested for burglary last month in our town.

That being said, this is not a strict rule, and if the focus is specifically on the fact of something being a total, you would use "was".

  • "A total of five cars is impossible: you must have miscounted."
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I prefer your caveat to your answer and believe the entity is singular, referring rather to "a total" (singular) than to "payments". I will concede that the plural form doesn't sound at all shocking. – msanford Dec 9 '10 at 18:36
Is there a better source for this than some guy on the internet? – Don Reba Jan 31 '12 at 1:00
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The question is: was the "total" made, or were the "payments" made. In this case, I think it's clear that the payments were made, and so it's "were". – Peter Shor Mar 24 '12 at 12:52
up vote 1 down vote

The subject of the sentence were the payments, and not the total number of payments, therefore were is correct.

A total of 10 payments were made.

You could re-phrase the sentence to make the total the subject:

The total number of payments made was 10

VonC offers a useful rule-of-thumb - 'A total...' = plural, 'The total...' = singular - but it all boils down to the subject of the sentence.

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Do you mean the other way round: 'A total...'=plural, 'The total...'=singular ? – TCL Nov 26 '10 at 17:44
Er... might have done... ;) [corrected] – CJM Dec 8 '10 at 11:10
up vote 0 down vote

"A total of ten payments were made". VonC has provided the reasoning, so I'm posting because I was taught not to use a number in the kind of sentence you've used. i.e: use 'ten' instead of '10'.

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