Why do we use singular verb in sentences like this:

Just sitting here and watching the world go by. (not goes)

Just sitting here and watching paint dry. (not dries)

The world goes, doesn't it?


Question: What is best practice to handle whitespaces when letting the user edit the configuration, the name=value pairs?
Answer: As a user, I don't expect the whitespace on either side of the equals sign to change the value of the key or the value. See this related question on unix.SE as too how confusing the situation can be.

Don't make it harder on your users, trim whitespace from both the key and the value. If leading whitespace has a real use case for either, then let the user wrap the key or value in quotes.