“What matters is” — Grammar Breakdown

The key word there is “usually”! If you’re relieved that you’ve finally got English word order down, brace yourself: Sometimes, it can be changed!

There are sentences in which this order can be reversed, with the predicate coming first. This is called an “inverted sentence.”

We’ll take a look at a phrase below that can appear at the beginning of a sentence in this way and talk about how to use it!

Is “what matters is” grammatically correct?

“What matters is” comes at the beginning of an inverted sentence or clause and is grammatically correct when used this way. The verb “is” is singular, so the thing it is referring to that matters must also be singular. However, if those multiple items are one unit, it is also grammatically correct.
 

What is the grammar of the phrase “what matters is”?

The phrase “what matters is” is used to talk about something that is important. The verb “to matter” means that something is important.

Therefore, if you said, “The weather is what matters,” you would mean that the weather is important.

Notice that in the above example, “the weather” is the subject.

“What matters” is the complement or predicate, the part that comes at the end of the sentence.

A clause constructed with “what matters is” at the beginning is an inverted one, meaning that the subject comes at the end and the predicate at the beginning:

 
The subject can be more than one word:

What matters is the understanding between our two countries.

When the noun phrase is an independent clause, you may want to insert “that” before it for maximum clarity although you don’t necessarily have to:

Both of the above examples are correct.

Should you use “what matters is” or “what matters are”?

As mentioned above, the “is” in this phrase indicates that what follows is singular.

However, it’s important to note that singular does not necessarily mean one thing.

Sometimes, two or more things can be considered a single unit:

When it comes to avoiding heat exhaustion, what matters is staying in the shade and remaining hydrated.

This is a little bit ambiguous, but one way to think about it is if you consider the multiple things to be all part of the same concept.

In the example above, just staying in the shade alone or just remaining hydrated might not be enough to avoid heat exhaustion, but the two together might.

You could also reverse it:

Staying in the shade and remaining hydrated is what matters when it comes to avoiding heat exhaustion.

It’s a little bit tricky because you can’t always know without a shadow of a doubt whether a writer meant for the two things to be considered as one or has just made an error.

Similarly, if you use “is” for two or more items, your reader may think you have made a mistake when it was deliberate.

What you’ll find is that in most cases, “is” is the better choice.

Here’s another way you might see it used that’s a little less ambiguous because the subject, “points,” is clearly plural.

What matters are the points mentioned earlier in the lecture: that the study needs to be replicated, that there may have been errors in gathering the data and that the researchers may have been biased.

If you reverse this sentence, it is clear that “are” is the right choice:

The points mentioned earlier in the lecture are what matters: that the study needs to be replicated, that there may have been errors in gathering the data and that the researchers may have been biased.

Why would you use the phrase “what matters is” to construct a sentence?

You might argue that a sentence like “What matters is the weather” could be turned around to be clearer and more straightforward, a simple subject + verb construction:

Or, you could keep all the words from the original sentence but turn them around:

Both of these are the same thing as saying:

So, why bring in something more complicated like starting the sentence with “what matters is” when you could just use these simpler constructions instead?

While all of these statements technically have the same meaning, when you begin a sentence or a clause with “what matters is,” you are really emphasizing the importance of the thing that matters. You might even be implying that is it is the most important thing.

Emphasis is generally the reason for sentence inversion.

Take a look at this passage:

When it comes to surviving storms at sea in a small craft, what matters is the severity of the weather.

I mean, sure, the hardiness of the boat matters and the skill of the crew matters. But nobody can survive going into a hurricane in a tiny sailboat. If the weather is really bad, none of that other stuff will help.

Do you see how “what matters” is being used here?

The speaker names two other things that are important factors in safety, how hardy the boat is and how skilled the crew is.

However, if a bad storm at sea happens, the only thing that is really important is just how catastrophic that weather is.

When you see a sentence or a clause that begins with “what matters is,” to yourself, you could inject a “really” in between “what” and “matters,” because ultimately, what the person is saying is “the MOST important thing is.”

How would you use “what matters is” in a sentence?

All of the above is clearer if we look at a few more examples of how “what matters is” used in a sentence.

Here are a couple of simple ones in which what follows the phrase is a noun:

Of course, what often comes after the phrase is more than just a single noun:

“What matters is” is not always at the very beginning of a sentence: