This slide show are????

Like most of you, I have friends who send me lots and lots of slide shows and YouTube videos through e-mail. Some I enjoy, and some I just delete. The other day I received one with beautiful photos of our treasured National Parks.

As I told the sender, I loved the photos, but I was not impressed with the first sentence the original sender had affixed to the e-mail:

This slide show of National Parks are in alphabetic order.

This person forgot to mentally remove the prepositional phrase (of National Parks) while deciding what the verb should be. The subject of this sentence is SLIDE SHOW, which is singular. Therefore, the verb should be IS, which is singular.

One more comment: Although "alphabetic" is a word, the preferred form for use when describing the order of words is "alphabetical."

I'd suggest this sentence should read as follows:

This slide show of National Parks is in alphabetical order.

I hope all of you get to visit at least some of these beautiful parks in your lifetime. If you'd like to receive an e-mail with the slide show attached, please leave me a comment. (I promise to correct the sentence before forwarding it!)