Should it be:

6 pages of changes is certainly copious


6 pages of changes are certainly copious


It depends on whether you want to refer to the groups of items individually or collectively. For example:

The six herds of elephants are heading toward the river.

This suggests that each of the herds is moving separately, but in a coordinated way. However we could collectively refer to the total number of elephants as a singular value:

Six herds of elephants is a lot of elephants.

In your example, it sounds like you are talking about the collective set of pages/changes, in which case the verb should also be singular:

Six pages of changes is certainly a copious (bordering on the ridiculous) amount of changes.

However if you follow by referring to the action related to each of the changes, you could use the plural:

How are we expected to get through all those in a single day?

Or you could again refer to them collectively:

How are we expected to get through all that in a single day?

  • 1
    I particularly like your "follow-up" illustration contrasting all those and all that (both of which can be equally and perfectly natural, even though we'd have quite a strong preference for singular in the preceding statement as provided by OP). – FumbleFingers Feb 27 at 17:16

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