Number, majority and total are singular if preceded by the, but plural if preceded by a. <br />
A number of people believe he is innocent. <br />
A majority of residents want the town to reduce the recreation fee. <br />
A total of 15 people were arrested for burglary last month in our town. <br />
But: The number of residents who signed the petition has grown.

For all [Fowler's] classicist rigor, he was a tolerant man who realized that “tilting against established perversions...is vanity in more than one sense.” His ideal was a democratic one, a natural, unaffected and humbug-free English summed up in the word “idiom.” And if idiom and grammar are in conflict, so much the worse for grammar. Thus he was cheerfully lax about “who & whom” and the placement of “only,” and he mocked the pains people go through to avoid ending their sentences with prepositions. When it came to the notorious split infinitive (e.g., “to boldly go where no man . . .”), he observed that those English speakers who neither know nor care about them “are to be envied” by the unhappy few who do. Despite this abundance of common sense, one shouldn’t spend too much time in Fowler’s company. Better writers may be attracted to his volume, but more for random delight than for improvement....[H]eightened self-consciousness about usage is the enemy of vigor.'