It’s a billboard custom-tailored to grammar buffs. “Every day we help people get back to their everyday,” proclaims the ad for Keck Medical Center of USC.

For example, in “A herd of gazelles is/are on the savanna,” you have two nouns: the head word in this noun phrase is the collective “herd,” which could take a singular verb.

On the other hand, modifiers, which are in most cases adjectives, give us the attribute of a noun, noun phrase or pronoun. For example, ‘The marathon runner who broke the record is a Kenyan”.

Nouns and Noun Phrases. Nouns are words that name people, places or things. For example, ‘man’ and ‘kitchen’ are nouns. One word is naming a person and the other is naming a place.

In a March Stylebook update, Froke said, the AP noted the difference between commonly recognized noun phrases and compound modifiers in phrases. Her example: “Chocolate chip cookie” doesn’t ...