Verb agreement with subjects of different grammatical number [duplicate]

Possible Duplicate:
When a sentence uses an optional plural, should the rest of the sentence treat it as singular or plural?

I'm writing a technical guide and trying to define 'reader' as it relates to the subject of the guide.

The reader(s) is/are the user(s) who view the content.

How do I get rid of all those conditionals? I've also considered,

The reader or readers are the users who view the content.

... which seems fine, but if we flip it, we get:

The readers or reader are the users who view the content.

I've also considered the most obvious:

The readers are the users who view the content

... but I want it implicit that there can be as few as one reader. Am I just over thinking this?

Give the definition of the term using the singular of the word; the fact you are defining a term using the singular of the doesn't mean there is just a reader at time.

You're overthinking it slightly. In practice, your version "The reader or readers are the users who view the content." sounds fine. Yes, if you switch the order of the words round, it doesn't. So don't switch the order of the words round!

If it really bugs you, then strategies used in contract writing include:

• insert an overtly singular word such as "term" and make the verb agree with that;
• use determiners such as 'any' that aren't marked for number;
• similarly, instead of conjugated verbs, use participles.

So then you get e.g. "The term 'reader(s)' refers to any user(s) viewing the context."

However, I do also think you may be trying to over-egg the omelette. In practice, it's common enough to write things like "Any reader(s) who view the content", and it's understood that the reader is to do the 'syntactical rejigging' to understand the subject as singular or plural.