The Associated Press Stylebook helps create standards for publication writing. It tells writers and editors how to spell words and how to render numbers, among other things. It also offers rules on grammar and usage. It is the stylebook we rely on at The N&O, supplemented by an internal stylebook. The AP stylebook can be a valuable tool; it can also be a path to confusion.

A reader found fault with this sentence from a front-page story Sunday: 

The number of households in the state that depend on food stamps has increased 45 percent over the last two years. 

She thought the writer and editors had made an error in subject-verb agreement.