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

It's 4:55 on a Friday and you're writing the email nobody wants to send — the deadline's slipped, someone's waiting — and the first line that lands under your fingers is: There is a delay on the final files. Or it's homework night, the blank page is staring back, and you open your story with There was a noise from the cupboard. Different desks, same little word doing the same quiet job. In both cases you've parked a brand-new piece of information in the doorway of the sentence — before you've named a culprit, a character, or a settled subject the reader already knows.

That's existential there, and it's one of the most ordinary tools in English — which is exactly why it slips past us. We use it thousands of times without ever naming it.

Here's the thing, though. This there is not the there in the cat is there, on the mat — the one that points across the room and answers where? That's a different job entirely (we call it locative there, and it's covered back in Pillar 3 — I'll leave it there). The there we're chasing today doesn't point anywhere at all. It's a placeholder that holds the door open so the real news can walk in.

If you've ever been told there is is "lazy writing," or had a there's red-penned for agreement, or quietly fretted over there's lots of reasons — you're in the right place. Nobody's born knowing this. Let's untangle it.

Before you read on, here's where we're heading. By the end of this article, you'll be able to: - Tell existential there ("There is a problem") apart from locative there ("The problem is there, on the desk"). - Make the verb agree with the real subject — there is vs there are, there was vs there were. - Spot overuse — three soft there is openers in a row — and fix it. - Understand why casual speech bends the agreement rule, on both sides of the Atlantic. - Use existential there on purpose, for new ideas and rhythm, instead of by habit.

Beginner (Foundation): what existential there actually does

Let me start with two sentences that look almost like twins but do completely different work:

• A: The cat is there, on the mat.
• B: There is a cat on the mat.

Read them aloud. In sentence A, there is a place-word — we already know the cat, and there tells us where it is. That's the locative kind, and we're not spending time on it here. In sentence B, something else is happening. The writer hasn't led with the cat at all — they've opened with there, a kind of doorbell, and only after the verb does the actual subject show up. You ring the bell before the door opens. You say there is before you say what is.

Look at the pattern across everyday life — a classroom, an inbox, a group chat:

• There is a spider in the bath.
• There are three questions left on the exam.
• There's a leak under the sink.
• There were two blockers on the project.

In none of those is there pointing at a corner of the room. It's a structural stand-in — grammar's way of filling the subject slot so English can say "this exists" cleanly. The thing that actually exists — a spider, three questions, a leak — is what grammarians call the notional subject, and it sits after the verb. That's the opposite of the usual English order, where the subject comes first, and it's precisely what catches people out.

Why bother with all this? Because English likes to ease a reader in — known information first, new information second — and existential there is a neat little machine for exactly that. Compare A problem exists (blunt, the subject lands straight away) with There is a problem (softer, we're being led in). Both are correct. The second just opens the door before showing you what's behind it.

Two quick checks while the idea's fresh. First — ask "what exists?" and the answer is your notional subject, the noun after is or are. Second — try pulling there out of the sentence. If it collapses into nonsense (Is a delay on the final files), you're looking at existential there. If it survives with an ordinary subject (The cat is on the mat), you had the locative kind all along.

Quick recap: - Existential there introduces something new that "exists" — it isn't a place-word. - The real (notional) subject comes after the verb: There is a problem. - It's a different job from locative there, which points to a place (Pillar 3). - We use it to bring in new information gently, before a known subject is ready.

Intermediate (Development): agreement, and where people trip

Once you can spot existential there, the next step is the one that actually loses marks — and quietly wobbles work emails — agreement.

Here's the rule, and it's the whole game: the verb agrees with the notional subject that follows it, not with the word there. Singular subject takes is or was; plural subject takes are or were. It doesn't matter that there got to the front first — there isn't really the subject, so look past it and find the noun that's doing the existing.

• There is a free seat by the window. (singular)
• There are free seats by the window. (plural)
• There was an announcement about the trip. (singular)
• There were two announcements about the trip. (plural)

Simple enough — until your ear gets in the way. Consider a line lifted straight from real student writing: There's lots of reasons why I didn't finish. It sounds perfectly natural, and that's the trap. Your ear hears there's as a single chunk, and lots of reasons feels like an afterthought explaining it. But the real subject is reasons — plural — so careful writing wants There are lots of reasons why I didn't finish.

Quantity phrases are where this bites hardest, so look past the phrase to the head noun:

• There is a lot of noise from the hall. (noise — a mass thing, singular)
• There are a lot of people in the hall. (people — plural)
• There has been a series of delays. (series is one unit — singular)
• There have been a number of complaints. (a number of is plural in sense)

Common Mistake: Matching the verb to the nearest noun instead of the whole subject. There is sweets and cake on the table — wrong; the subject is sweets and cake (plural), so it's There are sweets and cake on the table. Your ear latches onto cake because it's closest; don't let it.

Mixed lists are genuinely awkward, and I won't pretend otherwise. Strictly, There are a map, a compass and a torch in the bag is correct — the list is plural — even though the singular a map leading the charge makes it sound slightly off. In speech most people just agree with whatever noun comes first and move on. In careful writing, the tidy fix is usually to rearrange: In the bag you'll find a map, a compass and a torch. When the grammar and your ear are arguing, reword until they shake hands.

Existential there also inverts for questions and takes negatives without any fuss — worth a quick look, because you'll use these constantly:

• Is there time to revise? — Are there any seats left? — Was there a reason for the change?
• There isn't a printer today. — There aren't enough copies. — There was no warning.

And this all sits inside a bigger pattern. In terms of given and new information (Pillar 11.1), existential there is the soft doorway — the reader doesn't share a topic with you yet, so you announce existence first and fill in the details after. It also serves end-weight (Pillar 11.2): English prefers long, heavy noun phrases later in the sentence, and there buys you the room. There was a long, faintly glowing corridor behind the last locked door lets that big phrase breathe at the end, where it belongs. The deep machinery of agreement itself lives in Pillar 5 — this is just that same machinery in a slightly sneaky word order.

Pro-Tip: Stuck on how to open a paragraph? Draft it with There is or There are just to get the new idea onto the page — then, in the edit, decide whether a stronger, named subject would serve the final version better. Existential there is a fine scaffold; you don't have to leave it in the finished building.

Quick recap: - Agree the verb with the notional subject after it, never with there. - Watch quantity phrases — look through them to the head noun. - Mixed lists are clumsy; reorder the sentence if grammar and ear disagree. - Existential there inverts for questions and serves given/new flow and end-weight.

Advanced (Mastery): register, overuse, and knowing when to drop it

Here's where the rulebook meets real language — and where you stop writing "safe" sentences and start making choices.

Casual-speech agreement is a register tendency, not a fault — and not a nationality. You hear it every day, and you say it too: There's loads of reasons that won't scale. There's three things I want to check before we go live. Strictly, formal prose wants there are. But freezing there's into a ready-made opener is a feature of spoken English — it behaves like a fixed unit, spat out before the brain has counted the nouns. The grammar books that treat this as a moral failing rather miss the point.

And let me be plain about one thing, because it gets muddled constantly: this is not a British-versus-American split. There's + a plural is a spoken-register tendency on both sides of the Atlantic — you'll hear it just as readily in Bristol as in Chicago, and formal writing in both places still tightens up to there are. So stop second-guessing your passport. What you're choosing between is speech and writing, not one country and another. Texting a friend, writing dialogue, chatting in a meeting — there's three left is natural. An exam essay, a cover letter, a board paper, an email to a fussy client — go with there are, or better, rewrite around a stronger subject.

The three-there is problem. Because existential there is so handy, it turns into a habit — a soft landing you keep reaching for. Watch what happens when you stack them:

There is an issue with the data feed. There is no owner for the nightly job. There is also a risk to the quarter's report.

Three cushions in a row. No agent, no spine — the reader never gets a firm footing, and a marker or a manager will notice the sag. I still catch myself doing it in first drafts. The fix isn't to ban the construction; it's to stop sleepwalking into it. Keep one careful existential where it genuinely introduces the topic, then let real subjects carry the rest:

The data feed has a problem: the nightly job has no owner, which puts the quarter's report at risk.

The same trick rescues a story that's gone limp — There was a prince. There was a princess. There were three tasks. There was a wizard becomes far livelier as There was a prince who wanted true love. In a nearby kingdom lived a princess. He had three tasks to complete. An old wizard would guide him. The first there earns its place, setting the scene; after that, vary the entrance and the rhythm wakes up.

Common Mistake: Believing existential there is simply "bad style" to be purged on sight. It isn't. It's only weak when it hides an idea that would be clearer if you just named it — There have been some mistakes dodges the actor; We made some mistakes owns it. Sometimes that dodge is deliberate diplomacy (There appears to be some confusion about the deadlines blames nobody). Choose it on purpose, not by reflex.

Empty weight and faux-formality. Some existential openings are just scaffolding you can kick away once the thought is clear. There is a need for us to review this is usually We need to review this. There is the fact that costs rose is often just because costs rose. Real formality has its place; padding pretending to be formality doesn't. Advanced editing is mostly knowing which is which.

Beyond be. Be is the classic partner, but existential there works with a small family of verbs — and they can make analytical writing feel sharper and less repetitive: There seems to be a misunderstanding. There remains one unanswered question. There have been several attempts to fix it. The agreement rule holds throughout — there seems to be a mistake against there seem to be several mistakes.

The deep why. English has no everyday freestanding verb of existence that sits comfortably at the front of a sentence — A problem exists we need to solve is stiff and faintly Victorian. So we package existence through there + be (and its cousins) precisely so we can manage information: the notional subject carries the new content and sits where readers can handle its weight, while there keeps the clause legal. That's the point of Pillar 11 under the hood — not decoration, but information management. Which is why register (Pillar 9), agreement (Pillar 5) and pronoun reference all orbit this one small word.

Pro-Tip: In a revision pass, search your document for There is, There are and There's. Keep the ones that truly usher in new material; convert the rest to sentences with real subjects. Three minutes of that pass usually hardens up a whole essay or report — you can feel the spine come back.

Quick recap: - There's + plural is a spoken-register tendency on both sides — formal writing still prefers there are. - Three there is openers in a row signal overuse; keep one, rebuild the rest around real subjects. - Existential there can hide the actor — sometimes useful for diplomacy, often just vague. - It works with seems, remains, appears too — and it's an information tool first, a "rule" second.

UK vs US Usage

On existential there, there's genuinely no clean UK/US grammar split — so I won't invent one. British and American English build these sentences the same way and follow the same agreement.

The one thing people do notice — there's with a plural, as in there's three left — is a frequency and register tendency shared by both varieties, not a national trait. It's common in casual speech and informal writing on both sides of the Atlantic, and formal writing in London and formal writing in Chicago alike tighten it to there are. Attribute the casual form to speech and chat, then, never to "American English" or "British English." Write to your audience's formality, not to a stereotype.

(Spelling swaps you'll meet in US sources — colour [US: color], centre [US: center], organise [US: organize] — change nothing about how there is / there are works.)

Key Takeaways

• Existential there introduces the existence of something new before a familiar subject is ready: There is a problem with the plan.
• The verb agrees with the notional subject that follows it — There is a book / There are three books.
• It's not locative (place-pointing) there — that's a different tool (Pillar 3).
• There's + plural is casual speech on both sides of the Atlantic; formal writing still wants there are.
• Three there is openers in a row is overuse — keep one, and give the rest real subjects.
• Use it on purpose — for new ideas, end-weight and rhythm — not as your default for every sentence.

Check Your Understanding

1. Existential or locative? (a) There is a note on your locker. (b) Your locker is over there.
2. Choose the verb for formal writing: There ___ several points we still need to discuss. (a) is (b) are
3. Rewrite for correct formal agreement: There's three mistakes in this paragraph.
4. True or false: There's three options left is "American English," and Brits avoid it.
5. Improve this stack without losing the meaning: There is a problem. There is no bus. There is also a test tomorrow.
6. Rewrite to name a clearer subject: There have been some complaints about the new booking system.

Related Articles

• 11.1 — Given vs New Information: why existential there is such a natural doorway for new ideas.
• 11.2 — End-Weight: how there lets a long, heavy noun phrase sit where English likes it.
• 11.6 (next): the information-structure pattern that follows this one — including dummy it.
• Pillar 3 — Clauses, Phrases and Word Order: locative there and question inversion (referenced here, taught there).
• Pillar 5 — Subject–Verb Agreement: the full machinery behind there is / there are.
• Pillar 9 — Register and Tone: when casual there's lots of reasons is fine, and when to tighten up.