Life and health is both uncertain.

    Wisdom, virtue, happiness, dwells with the golden mediocrity.

    The planetary system, boundless space, and the immense ocean,
    affects the mind with sensations of astonishment.

    What signifies the counsel and care of preceptors, when you think
    you have no need of assistance?

    Their love, and their hatred, and their envy, is now perished.

    Why is whiteness and coldness in snow?

    Obey the commandment of thy father, and the law of thy mother; bind
    it continually upon thy heart.

    Pride and vanity always render its possessor despicable in the eyes
    of the judicious.

    There is error and discrepance in the schemes of the orthoepists,
    which shows the impossibility of carrying them into effect.

EXAMPLES FOR THE NOTE.

    Every man, woman, and child, were numbered.

Not proper; for, although and couples things together so as to present the whole at one view, yet every has a contrary effect:  it distributes them, and brings each separately and singly under consideration. Were numbered is therefore improper.  It should be, “was numbered,” in the singular, according to the Note. (Repeat it.)

    When benignity and gentleness reign in our breasts, every person and
    every occurrence are beheld in the most favorable light.

RULE IX.

Two or more nouns, or nouns and pronouns, in the singular number, connected by disjunctive conjunctions, must have verbs, nouns, and pronouns, agreeing with them in the singular; as, “Neither John nor James has learned his lesson.”

NOTE 1.  When singular pronouns, or a noun and pronoun, of different persons, are disjunctively connected, the verb must agree, in person, with that which is placed nearest to it; as, “Thou or I am in fault; I or thou art to blame; I, or thou, or he, is the author of it.”  But it would be better to say “Either I am to blame or thou art,” &c.

2.  When a disjunctive occurs between a singular noun or pronoun and a plural one, the verb must agree with the plural noun or pronoun, which should generally be placed next to the verb; as, “Neither poverty nor riches were injurious to him;” “I or they were offended by it.”

Constructions like these ought generally to be avoided.

FALSE SYNTAX.

    Ignorance or negligence have caused this mistake.

The verb, have caused, in this sentence, is improperly used in the plural, because it expresses the action, not of both, but of either the one or the other of its nominatives; therefore it should be in the singular, has caused; and then it would agree with “ignorance or negligence,” agreeably to Rule 9 (Repeat the Rule.)