Existential "There": How to Introduce New Information Without Naming a Subject Yet

"There is a spider in the bath." Read that little word there again. It is not pointing at a place - nobody is telling you where the spider is by waving a hand across the room. It is doing something else entirely: it is opening the door of the sentence and announcing that something exists. Grammarians call this the existential "there" (from the word exist), and it is one of the most ordinary tools in all of English. We use it thousands of times without ever noticing - which is exactly why it is worth stopping to look at properly, because once you can see it, you can use it well instead of by accident.

You need this word because English has no comfortable everyday way to start a sentence with plain existence. A spider exists in the bath sounds stiff and slightly Victorian. So we reach for There is... instead, and it lets us slip a brand-new thing into the conversation gently, before we have named a subject the reader already knows.

Two different "there"s

The tricky part is that English uses the same spelling for two completely different jobs. Keeping them apart is the whole foundation:

• Place there: points at a spot. Put it over there. (you could actually point at it)
• Existential there: announces that something exists. There is a problem. (you are not pointing anywhere)

Here is a quick way to tell them apart. Try pulling the word there out of the sentence. If it collapses into nonsense (Is a problem), you had the existential kind. If it survives with an ordinary subject still in place (Put it over ___ still points somewhere, and The cat is ___ still works), you had the place kind. The existential there is a stand-in, keeping the subject seat warm; the place there is a real answer to the question where?

Why it is useful

The clever thing about existential there is where it lets you put the interesting bit. It pushes the new, exciting thing to the end of the sentence, which is exactly where the spotlight falls:

✗ A huge queue was outside the shop. ✓ There was a huge queue outside the shop.

The there was opens the sentence softly, gives the reader a moment to settle, and then delivers the news - a huge queue - right where their attention has landed. That is end-weight again: the heavy, newsworthy part gets the roomy end position. It is the same reason There was a long, dark corridor behind the last door reads so much better than trying to cram that whole phrase in at the front.

The verb agrees with what comes next

This is the part that catches people out and quietly costs marks. Because there is only a stand-in and not the real subject, the verb does not agree with it. Instead, the verb agrees with the true subject, which comes after it:

There is a book. → There are three books.

Is and are match book and books - not the word there. So you have to look past there, find the actual noun doing the existing, and match the verb to that. The trap is your ear: there's feels like one solid chunk, so a sentence like There's lots of reasons sounds fine - but the real subject is reasons, which is plural, so careful writing wants There are lots of reasons. Watch out especially for quantity phrases, and match the verb to the head noun: There is a lot of noise (noise is one mass), but There are a lot of people (people is plural).

Watch out: do not overuse it

There is and there are are handy, but lean on them too often and your writing goes limp, because none of the sentences has a real, active subject doing anything:

• ✗ There was a boy. There was a dog. There was a park.
• ✓ A boy walked his dog to the park.

Keep existential there for the moments when you are genuinely introducing something new that has no anchor yet. Once the thing exists in the reader's mind, switch to naming a proper subject and letting it act. A good habit when you edit: search your writing for there is, there are and there's, keep the one or two that truly usher in something new, and rebuild the rest around real subjects. You can feel the writing get a backbone.

Why it matters

Two things ride on this small word. First, agreement: there is versus there are is a classic slip that markers notice, and getting it right instantly signals careful writing. Second, rhythm: used well, existential there is a graceful way to lead a reader into new information and to park a long, heavy phrase where English likes it. Used badly - three there was openers in a row - it makes a story or an essay sag. So treat it as a deliberate tool, not a lazy default, and it will quietly improve both the accuracy and the flow of everything you write.

Quick check

is or are?

1. There ___ a mistake on page four.

2. There ___ lots of options.

3. There ___ three reasons I was late.

4. Existential or place there? There is milk in the fridge.

5. Improve this limp stack: There was a knight. There was a dragon. There was a castle.

Where next

• End-Weight: Save the Heavy Bit for Last — why there is helps.
• Subject–Verb Agreement — matching is/are to the real subject.
• How Word Order Shows What Matters — introducing new information.