"Five eggs is too much" is fine.

These sorts of arguments about language always remind me of that old army staff college line: "That's all very well in practice but how would it work in theory?"

"So I'm pretty big on correcting other people's grammar when they misspeak."

You must be real fun at parties.

"@I'm - of course, they're both idioms, so I don't think the verb / noun thing is that important, really."

In a nutshell.

Language logic tends to be holistic in nature; the logic of the expression is in the meaning conveyed by the idiom as a whole, not by its constituent parts.

"'The plants were withered' Adjective or passive?"

Let me be the devil's advocate: does it actually matter here? Does it change the meaning?

For what it's worth, I stopped wasting time on the differences between hyphens and dashes some years ago. I just use the hyphen ("-") for everything.

My two cents, anyway.

"I am questioning whether Owner should be with WERE or Owner should be with WAS?"

The answer is "yes". In other words, either one. The use of the subjunctive "were" has been giving way to "was" as someone already stated here.

Yes, in fact the verb form "I says/I knows/I sits" etc. is actually quite particular for those dialects that use it and is confined to situations where a personal narrative is being provided.

"Backwards and forwards are standard in British English, though not in American English (Webster thought 'forwards' a corruption),"

Webster was out to lunch on this one. That final s isn't just an English thing: it's a characteristic of the Germanic languages.

As Erich Honecker used to say: "Vorwärts immer, rückwärts nimmer!"

"So basically what you are saying is that both are grammatically sound then but 'I have to work tomorrow' is more commonly used?"

Both are grammatically correct. Although I presume "I have to work tomorrow" is more common, I couldn't say for sure.

If you'll permit me, I think you're a bit guilty of overanalyzing here.

First, there is a clear difference between both sentences: one begins with "tomorrow", the other ends with it. Yes, this might seem like an appallingly obvious statement but here's the rub: if a speaker meant to say "I have to work tomorrow" they would not say "tomorrow I have to work".

So the position of "tomorrow" certainly does affect the meaning of the statement. However (getting back to the issue of overanalyzing), I believe the affect is simply one of emphasis.

Your "have to" is a red herring.