Let us say, I have been given two sentences in an MCQ test and I need to pick up the correct one.
- He is one of the men who do the work.
- He is one of the men who does the work.
Somehow, I lean towards the second one ("It is I who am to blame", the one sentence memorized to take care of cases like this), but I have found some grammar books supporting the first one.
Best Answer
The second one is the better choice, because does agrees with one. Here, men is the target of the preposition of. The phrase of the men serves to qualify one; it is not the subject of the clause.
If you remove of the men, you can see that does is correct (though one then needs a specifier; I add the to fulfil this requirement):
The emphasis here is on a single man. Though he is not the only one who does the work, he is the subject of discussion. The sentence isn't talking about a group of men; it's talking about one man who also happens to be part of a group. Thus, do should be conjugated to agree with one.