Subject-Verb agreement with compound subjects

[Carol]

CJ:
> My own intuitions are in agreement with Geoff's -- of the three, 
"Neither he nor I are" is the only one that doesn't raise the 
metaphorical hackles of my native intuition, and would be my reference
in cases where a rewrite were infeasible. If I might be so bold as to
impose my own intuitions on the general populace, I suspect "are"
would be the preference of a majority -- or at least a plurality -- of
English speakers. <snip>

Carol responds:

i think that the preference of most English speakers would be to avoid
such awkward constructions altogether. I also notice that the rest of
this paragraph (and your post in general) conforms perfectly to
standard English, so that your "intuition" and the consensus agreed
upon by authorities in the field are identical. Your instinct, in
other words, is to speak (well, write, in this instance) "good
English." (A great many people share this instinct. However, not all
of them have been taught standard English, and so they'll come up with
solecisms, such as "May I help who's next?" (where did that miserable
phrase come from and how did it spread so quickly?) or "John and
myself need to lay down" (okay, I made that one up by combining two
errors, or, if you prefer, two constructions that are considered to be
nonstandard).

So, should we start saying, "I need to lay down" if it turns out that
a plurality of English speakers use it, or should we continue to
preserve the distinction between "lay" and "lie"? I, of course, favor
preserving the distinction, but I don't claim to be unbiased.
Copyeditors must, after all, have something to do, and correcting (or
standardizing) the grammar, punctuation, spelling, and capitalization
for the sake of clarity and consistency throughout a given manuscript
and all the works published by a given publisher (most American
publishers use "The Chicago Manual of Style" and Merriam-Webster as
their authorities) is a large part of our work. <snip>

> CJ:
 
> I'm not sure it's so much a case of youth not being taught
"standard" grammar so much as youth not finding much use for it. But
it is youth culture, with its chatspeak and disdain for "standard"
grammar, that provides so much of the dynamism that drives English
forward. Words like "manga", "chill pill", "ragazine" "tweener",
"Goth" and "bludge" (all of which were added to the OED recently) were
coined by twenty-somethings whose avowed purpose is often explicitly
driven by an aversion to the "rules".
> 
Carol:

Slang is generally ephemeral. One of two things will happen to those
words: either they'll be incorporated into standard English or they'll
go the way of "the cat's pajamas." Since slang is generally invented
by young people, who will inevitably (if they survive) become the next
"older generation," they'll see their slang disappear just as my
generation did. ("Groovy, man!")

Not that slang has much to do with standard usage (which is not the
same as "correct" grammar). I suspect that you and I agree that
"ragazine," whatever its meaning, is a singular, third-person neuter
noun and therefore requires a singular verb (third-person singular if
the verb is a form of "to be," the gender of the noun making no
difference to the verb form in English.

Carol, not ready to yield to the tyranny of the masses (however
well-washed they may be in soap- and deodorant-loving America), in the
matter of standard usage (or spelling)